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Empathy Emerges Spontaneously in the Ultimatum Game: Small Groups and Networks

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  • Jaime Iranzo
  • Luis M Floría
  • Yamir Moreno
  • Angel Sánchez

Abstract

The Ultimatum game, in which one subject proposes how to share a pot and the other has veto power on the proposal, in which case both lose everything, is a paradigmatic scenario to probe the degree of cooperation and altruism in human subjects. It has been shown that if individuals are empathic, i.e., they play the game having in mind how their opponent will react by offering an amount that they themselves would accept, then non-rational large offers well above the smallest possible ones are evolutionarily selected. We here show that empathy itself may be selected and need not be exogenously imposed provided that interactions take place only with a fraction of the total population, and that the role of proposer or responder is randomly changed from round to round. These empathic agents, that displace agents with independent (uncorrelated) offers and proposals, behave far from what is expected rationally, offering and accepting sizable fractions of the amount to be shared. Specific values for the typical offer depend on the details of the interacion network and on the existence of hubs, but they are almost always significantly larger than zero, indicating that the mechanism at work here is quite general and could explain the emergence of empathy in very many different contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Jaime Iranzo & Luis M Floría & Yamir Moreno & Angel Sánchez, 2012. "Empathy Emerges Spontaneously in the Ultimatum Game: Small Groups and Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(9), pages 1-8, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0043781
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043781
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Akdeniz, Aslıhan & van Veelen, Matthijs, 2023. "Evolution and the ultimatum game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 570-612.
    2. Jia Li & Xiaolin Zhou, 2014. "Sex, Attractiveness, and Third-Party Punishment in Fairness Consideration," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(4), pages 1-6, April.
    3. Damon Tomlin, 2015. "Rational Constraints and the Evolution of Fairness in the Ultimatum Game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    4. Antonio M. Espín & Filippos Exadaktylos & Benedikt Herrmann & Pablo Brañas-Garza, 2013. "Short- and Long-run Goals in Ultimatum Bargaining," Working Papers 13-17, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    5. Yanling Zhang & Jian Liu & Aming Li, 2019. "Effects of Empathy on the Evolutionary Dynamics of Fairness in Group-Structured Systems," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2019, pages 1-13, November.

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