IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mar/magkse/201329.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Indirect Reciprocity, Golden Opportunities for Defection, and Inclusive Reputation

Author

Listed:
  • Hannes Rusch

    (University of Giessen)

  • Max Albert

    (University of Munich)

Abstract

In evolutionary models of indirect reciprocity, reputation mechanisms can stabilize cooperation even in severe cooperation problems like the prisoner’s dilemma. Under certain circumstances, conditionally cooperative strategies, which cooperate iff their partner has a good reputation, cannot be invaded by any other strategy that conditions behavior only on own and partner reputation. The first point of this paper is to show that an evolutionary version of backward induction can lead to a breakdown of this kind of indirectly reciprocal cooperation. Backward induction, however, requires trategies that count and then cease to cooperate in the last, last but one, last but two, game they play. These strategies are unlikely to exist in natural settings. We then present two new findings. (1) Surprisingly, the same kind of breakdown is also possible without counting. Strategies using rare golden opportunities for defection can invade conditional cooperators. This can create further golden opportunities, inviting the next wave of opportunists, and so on, until cooperation breaks down completely. (2) Cooperation can be stabilized against these opportunists, by letting an individual’s initial reputation be inherited from that individual’s parent. This ‘inclusive reputation’ mechanism can cope with any observably opportunistic strategy. Offspring of opportunists who successfully exploited a conditional cooperator cannot repeat their parents’ success because they inherit a bad reputation, which forewarns conditional cooperators in later generations.

Suggested Citation

  • Hannes Rusch & Max Albert, 2013. "Indirect Reciprocity, Golden Opportunities for Defection, and Inclusive Reputation," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201329, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
  • Handle: RePEc:mar:magkse:201329
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.uni-marburg.de/en/fb02/research-groups/economics/macroeconomics/research/magks-joint-discussion-papers-in-economics/papers/2013-papers/29-2013_albert.pdf
    File Function: First 201329
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Unknown, 1967. "Index," 1967 Conference, August 21-30, 1967, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 209796, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Tim Clutton-Brock, 2009. "Cooperation between non-kin in animal societies," Nature, Nature, vol. 462(7269), pages 51-57, November.
    3. Joseph Henrich & Steve J. Heine & Ara Norenzayan, 2010. "The Weirdest People in the World?," RatSWD Working Papers 139, German Data Forum (RatSWD).
    4. Martin A. Nowak & Karl Sigmund, 1998. "Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring," Nature, Nature, vol. 393(6685), pages 573-577, June.
    5. Martin A. Nowak & Karl Sigmund, 2005. "Evolution of indirect reciprocity," Nature, Nature, vol. 437(7063), pages 1291-1298, October.
    6. Ananish Chaudhuri & Sara Graziano & Pushkar Maitra, 2006. "Social Learning and Norms in a Public Goods Experiment with Inter-Generational Advice -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(2), pages 357-380.
    7. Lisa A. Parr & Frans B. M. de Waal, 1999. "Visual kin recognition in chimpanzees," Nature, Nature, vol. 399(6737), pages 647-648, June.
    8. Allen, Douglas W., 2011. "The Institutional Revolution," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226014746, December.
    9. Redouan Bshary & Alexandra S. Grutter, 2006. "Image scoring and cooperation in a cleaner fish mutualism," Nature, Nature, vol. 441(7096), pages 975-978, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Darcy W E Allen, 2020. "When Entrepreneurs Meet:The Collective Governance of New Ideas," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number q0269, December.
    2. Damien Francey & Ralph Bergmüller, 2012. "Images of Eyes Enhance Investments in a Real-Life Public Good," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-7, May.
    3. Graf, Caroline & Suanet, Bianca & Wiepking, Pamala & Merz, Eva-Maria, 2023. "Social norms offer explanation for inconsistent effects of incentives on prosocial behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 429-441.
    4. Simone Righi & Károly Takács, 2022. "Gossip: Perspective Taking to Establish Cooperation," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 1086-1100, December.
    5. Jian, Qing & Li, Xiaopeng & Wang, Juan & Xia, Chengyi, 2021. "Impact of reputation assortment on tag-mediated altruistic behaviors in the spatial lattice," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 396(C).
    6. Caroline Graf & Eva-Maria Merz & Bianca Suanet & Pamala Wiepking, 2021. "Social Norms Offer Explanation for Inconsistent Effects of Incentives on Prosocial Behavior," Papers 2104.13652, arXiv.org.
    7. Hisashi Ohtsuki & Yoh Iwasa & Martin A Nowak, 2015. "Reputation Effects in Public and Private Interactions," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-11, November.
    8. Charness, Gary & Du, Ninghua & Yang, Chun-Lei, 2011. "Trust and trustworthiness reputations in an investment game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 361-375, June.
    9. Andrew W. Bausch, 2014. "Evolving intergroup cooperation," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 369-393, December.
    10. Suzuki, Shinsuke & Akiyama, Eizo, 2008. "Evolutionary stability of first-order-information indirect reciprocity in sizable groups," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 426-436.
    11. Liang, Pinghan & Meng, Juanjuan, 2016. "Favor transmission and social image concern: An experimental study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 14-21.
    12. Lv, Shaojie & Wang, Xianjia, 2020. "The impact of heterogeneous investments on the evolution of cooperation in public goods game with exclusion," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 372(C).
    13. Mirko Duradoni & Mario Paolucci & Franco Bagnoli & Andrea Guazzini, 2018. "Fairness and Trust in Virtual Environments: The Effects of Reputation," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-15, June.
    14. Quan, Ji & Cui, Shihui & Chen, Wenman & Wang, Xianjia, 2023. "Reputation-based probabilistic punishment on the evolution of cooperation in the spatial public goods game," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 441(C).
    15. Otterbring, Tobias & Folwarczny, Michał, 2024. "Social validation, reciprocation, and sustainable orientation: Cultivating “clean†codes of conduct through social influence," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    16. Jason Delaney & Sarah Jacobson, 2016. "Payments or Persuasion: Common Pool Resource Management with Price and Non-price Measures," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(4), pages 747-772, December.
    17. Gao, Yan & Li, Minlan & Hu, Yuanyuan & Wang, Rui-Wu & Wang, Chao, 2024. "Evolutionary dynamics in voluntary prisoner’s dilemma game with environmental feedbacks," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    18. Brent Simpson & Bradley Montgomery & David Melamed, 2023. "Reputations for treatment of outgroup members can prevent the emergence of political segregation in cooperative networks," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-14, December.
    19. Laura Schmid & Farbod Ekbatani & Christian Hilbe & Krishnendu Chatterjee, 2023. "Quantitative assessment can stabilize indirect reciprocity under imperfect information," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-14, December.
    20. Sergio Beraldo & Robert Sugden, 2010. "The emergence of reciprocally beneficial cooperation," ICER Working Papers 18-2010, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    evolutionary game theory; repeated prisoner’s dilemma; backward induction; conditional cooperation; opportunism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mar:magkse:201329. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bernd Hayo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vamarde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.