Evolution of prosocial punishment in unstructured and structured populations and in the presence of antisocial punishment.

ABSTRACT: A large body of empirical evidence suggests that altruistic punishment abounds in human societies. Based on such evidence, it is suggested that punishment serves an important role in promoting cooperation in humans and possibly other species. However, as punishment is costly, its evolution is subject to the same problem that it tries to address. To suppress this so-called second-order free-rider problem, known theoretical models on the evolution of punishment resort to one of the few established mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation. This leaves the question of whether altruistic punishment can evolve and give rise to the evolution of cooperation in the absence of such auxiliary cooperation-favoring mechanisms unaddressed. Here, by considering a population of individuals who play a p

SUBMITTER: Salahshour M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8345862 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature