Moral Behaviour Pays Off
hubie writes:
Coupling two approaches of game theory can shed light on how moral norms evolve:
One of the most fundamental questions facing humanity is: why do we behave morally? Because it is by no means self-evident that under certain circumstances we set our self-interest aside and put ourselves in the service of a group - sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice. Many theories have been developed to get to the bottom of this moral conundrum. There are two well-known proposed solutions: that individuals help their relatives so that the common genes survive (kin selection), and that the principle of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" applies. If people help each other, everyone benefits in the end (principle of reciprocity).
Mathematician Mohammad Salahshour of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, has used the tools of game theory to explain the emergence of moral norms - because game theory studies how people make rational decisions in conflict situations. For Salahshour, the question at the outset was: why do moral norms exist in the first place? And why do we have different, or even contrasting moral norms? For example, while some norms such as "help others", promote self-sacrificing behaviour, others, such as dress codes, appear not to have much to do with curbing selfishness. To answer these questions, Salahshour coupled two games: first, the classic prisoner's dilemma, in which two players must decide whether to cooperate for a small reward or betray themselves for a much larger reward (social dilemma). This game can be a typical example of a social dilemma, where success of a group as a whole requires individuals to behave selflessly. [...] Second, a game that focuses on typical decisions within groups, such as a coordination task, distribution of resources, choice of a leader, or conflict resolution. Many of these problems can be ultimately categorized as coordination or anticoordination problems.
In the idealized Prisoner's Dilemma, the optimal "rational" behavior is for every participant to act in their own self interest, but problems that require some sort of moral norm to achieve coordination and cooperation can't be addressed if too many individuals are acting selfishly. Salahshour found that if you apply both games at the same time, that not only cooperative behavior emerges, but also a social order. Acting morally pays off for the group because all individuals benefit from it.
[...] "In my evolutionary model, there were no selfless behaviours at the beginning, but more and more moral norms emerged as a result of the coupling of the two games," Salahshour reports. "Then I observed a sudden transition to a system where there is a lot of cooperation." In this "moral state", a set of norms of coordination evolve which help individuals to better coordinate their activity, and it is precisely through this that social norms and moral standards can emerge. However, coordination norms favour cooperation: cooperation turns out to be a rewarding behaviour for the individual as well.
Journal Reference:
Mohammad Salahshour, Interaction between games give rise to the evolution of moral norms of cooperation, Plos Comp Bio, 2022. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010429
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