Title |
Uncertainty about social interactions leads to the evolution of social heuristics
|
---|---|
Published in |
Nature Communications, May 2018
|
DOI | 10.1038/s41467-018-04493-1 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Pieter van den Berg, Tom Wenseleers |
Abstract |
Individuals face many types of social interactions throughout their lives, but they often cannot perfectly assess what the consequences of their actions will be. Although it is known that unpredictable environments can profoundly affect the evolutionary process, it remains unclear how uncertainty about the nature of social interactions shapes the evolution of social behaviour. Here, we present an evolutionary simulation model, showing that even intermediate uncertainty leads to the evolution of simple cooperation strategies that disregard information about the social interaction ('social heuristics'). Moreover, our results show that the evolution of social heuristics can greatly affect cooperation levels, nearly doubling cooperation rates in our simulations. These results provide new insight into why social behaviour, including cooperation in humans, is often observed to be seemingly suboptimal. More generally, our results show that social behaviour that seems maladaptive when considered in isolation may actually be well-adapted to a heterogeneous and uncertain world. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom | 20 | 16% |
United States | 19 | 15% |
Japan | 5 | 4% |
Italy | 4 | 3% |
Germany | 4 | 3% |
Finland | 3 | 2% |
France | 2 | 2% |
Belgium | 2 | 2% |
Spain | 2 | 2% |
Other | 15 | 12% |
Unknown | 52 | 41% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 73 | 57% |
Scientists | 51 | 40% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 2 | 2% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 2 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Unknown | 164 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 35 | 21% |
Student > Master | 21 | 13% |
Student > Bachelor | 20 | 12% |
Researcher | 19 | 12% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 11 | 7% |
Other | 21 | 13% |
Unknown | 37 | 23% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Psychology | 42 | 26% |
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 20 | 12% |
Social Sciences | 12 | 7% |
Neuroscience | 6 | 4% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 6 | 4% |
Other | 29 | 18% |
Unknown | 49 | 30% |