Making an Example: Signalling Threat in the Evolution of Cooperation

Cimpeanu, Theodor

doi:10.1109/cec48606.2020.9185749

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…The current paper focuses on a variant of the PGG, i.e., the collective risk dilemma (CRD) ( Milinski et al., 2008 ), where participants have multiple rounds to collect a target contribution, making the game non-linear, and the collective benefit uncertain as it is only achievable in the future. This model, part of a larger set of dilemmas also known as threshold PGG ( Cadsby and Maynes, 1999 ; Offerman et al., 1998 ; Pacheco et al., 2009 ; Palfrey and Rosenthal, 1984 ), has been adopted to address the complexity pertaining decision-making under climate dilemmas ( Abou Chakra and Traulsen, 2012 ; Chakra et al., 2018 ; Milinski et al., 2008 ; Pacheco et al., 2014 ), but its significance is general enough to be of interest to a broad range of human endeavors, such as costly signaling ( Abou Chakra and Traulsen, 2012 ; Cimpeanu and Han, 2020 ; Gintis et al., 2001 ), voting ( Kroll et al., 2007 ; Putterman et al., 2011 ), or petitioning ( McBride, 2006 ; Pacheco et al., 2009 ). At the start of the game, participants are each given an endowment ( E ), and they must decide whether to contribute, up to a predefined amount, to the common good over a fixed number of rounds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Timing Uncertainty in Collective Risk Dilemmas Encourages Group Reciprocation and Polarization

et al. 2020

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Social dilemmas are often shaped by actions involving uncertain returns only achievable in the future, such as climate action or voluntary vaccination. In this context, uncertainty may produce non-trivial effects. Here, we assess experimentally-through a collective risk dilemma-the effect of timing uncertainty, i.e. how uncertainty about when a target needs to be reached affects the participants' behaviors. We show that timing uncertainty prompts not only early generosity but also polarized outcomes, where participants' total contributions are distributed unevenly. Furthermore, analyzing participants' behavior under timing uncertainty reveals an increase in reciprocal strategies. A data-driven game-theoretical model captures the self-organizing dynamics underpinning these behavioral patterns. Timing uncertainty thus casts a shadow on the future that leads participants to respond early, whereas reciprocal strategies appear to be important for group success. Yet, the same uncertainty also leads to inequity and polarization, requiring the inclusion of new incentives handling these societal issues. INTRODUCTION Public good games (PGGs) provide abstractions of many real-world problems wherein personal and shortterm interests of multiple players are in conflict with societal, long-term interests (Perc et al, 2013, 2017; Ramamoorthy, 2013). Participants in such games can contribute voluntarily to a common good, which can, once established, be accessed without restrictions by all, thus even those that did not contribute. Rational selfish behavior stipulates that it is best to not contribute; yet such decision would be detrimental, as a group is better off when all contribute. These games not only serve as a good model for social public benefits (e.g., social security, retirement funds) but are also recurrent in many other collective endeavors,

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Timing Uncertainty in Collective Risk Dilemmas Encourages Group Reciprocation and Polarization

et al. 2020

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“…Moreover, in this work, we do not consider the possibility of detecting the existence of a certain type of interference from an external party. In reality, individuals could be aware of active interference and react by changing their behaviour, either to become suitable candidates for reward or to avoid sanctions (Cimpeanu and Han, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Spending More Always Ensure Higher Cooperation? An Analysis of Institutional Incentives on Heterogeneous Networks

Cimpeanu¹,

Santos²,

Han³

2023

Preprint

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Humans have developed considerable machinery used at scale to create policies and to distribute incentives, yet we are forever seeking ways in which to improve upon these, our institutions. Especially when funding is limited, it is imperative to optimise spending without sacrificing positive outcomes, a challenge which has often been approached within several areas of social, life and engineering sciences. These studies often neglect the availability of information, cost restraints, or the underlying complex network structures, which define real-world populations. Here, we have extended these models, including the aforementioned concerns, but also tested the robustness of their findings to stochastic social learning paradigms. Akin to real-world decisions on how best to distribute endowments, we study several incentive schemes, which consider information about the overall population, local neighbourhoods, or the level of influence which a cooperative node has in the network, selectively rewarding cooperative behaviour if certain criteria are met. Following a transition towards a more realistic network setting and stochastic behavioural update rule, we found that carelessly promoting cooperators can often lead to their downfall in socially diverse settings. These emergent cyclic patterns not only damage cooperation, but also decimate the budgets of external investors. Our findings highlight the complexity of designing effective and cogent investment policies in socially diverse populations.

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“…For a very effective deterrence, there is a chess maxim telling that "the threat is stronger than its execution." Indeed, in some cases simulations have shown that making a threat of punishment can reduce the need to actually having to punish and improve cooperation [38]. To examine the efficiency of deterrence and how the punishment improve the cooperation through deterrence, we asked for the players, every time they acted as free-riders, whether they thought they will incur in a fine.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deterrence through punishment can resolve collective risk dilemmas in carbon emission games

Jiang

Chen

Perc

et al. 2023

Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

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Collective risk social dilemmas are at the heart of the most pressing global challenges we are facing today, including climate change mitigation and the overuse of natural resources. Previous research has framed this problem as a public goods game (PGG), where a dilemma arises between short-term interests and long-term sustainability. In the PGG, subjects are placed in groups and asked to choose between cooperation and defection, while keeping in mind their personal interests as well as the commons. Here, we explore how and to what extent the costly punishment of defectors is successful in enforcing cooperation by means of human experiments. We show that an apparent irrational underestimation of the risk of being punished plays an important role, and that for sufficiently high punishment fines, this vanishes and the threat of deterrence suffices to preserve the commons. Interestingly, however, we find that high fines not only avert freeriders, but they also demotivate some of the most generous altruists. As a consequence, the tragedy of the commons is predominantly averted due to cooperators that contribute only their “fair share” to the common pool. We also find that larger groups require larger fines for the deterrence of punishment to have the desired prosocial effect.

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Making an Example: Signalling Threat in the Evolution of Cooperation

Cited by 5 publications

References 40 publications

Timing Uncertainty in Collective Risk Dilemmas Encourages Group Reciprocation and Polarization

Timing Uncertainty in Collective Risk Dilemmas Encourages Group Reciprocation and Polarization

Does Spending More Always Ensure Higher Cooperation? An Analysis of Institutional Incentives on Heterogeneous Networks

Deterrence through punishment can resolve collective risk dilemmas in carbon emission games

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