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The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation

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Abstract

Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates. Selfish and traitorous strategies are self-limiting because such agents do not cooperate with agents sharing the same genes. Traitorous strategies fare even worse than selfish ones because traitors are exploited by ethnocentrics across group boundaries in the same manner as humanitarians are, via unreciprocated cooperation. By tracking evolution across time, we find individual differences between evolving worlds in terms of early humanitarian competition with ethnocentrism, including early stages of humanitarian dominance. Our evidence indicates that such variation, in terms of differences between humanitarian and ethnocentric agents, is normally distributed and due to early, rather than later, stochastic differences in immigrant strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • Max Hartshorn & Artem Kaznatcheev & Thomas Shultz, 2013. "The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 16(3), pages 1-7.
    • Handle: RePEc:jas:jasssj:2012-37-2
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    Cited by:

    1. Filipe Nobre Faria, 2017. "Is market liberalism adaptive? Rethinking F. A. Hayek on moral evolution," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 307-326, October.
    2. G Jordan Maclay & Moody Ahmad, 2021. "An agent based force vector model of social influence that predicts strong polarization in a connected world," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(11), pages 1-42, November.
    3. Roos, Patrick & Gelfand, Michele & Nau, Dana & Lun, Janetta, 2015. "Societal threat and cultural variation in the strength of social norms: An evolutionary basis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 14-23.
    4. Hadzibeganovic, Tarik & Liu, Chao & Li, Rong, 2021. "Effects of reproductive skew on the evolution of ethnocentrism in structured populations with variable size," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 568(C).
    5. Zhang, Hong & Ye, Hang, 2016. "Role of perception cost in tag-mediated cooperation," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 279(C), pages 76-89.
    6. William D. Tilson & Thomas K. Duncan & Daniel Farhat, 2020. "An Agent-Based Model of Ethnocentrism and the Unintended Consequences of Violence," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 46(3), pages 483-503, June.

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