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Shared intentions: the evolution of collaboration

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  • Newton, Jonathan

Abstract

The ability to share intentions and adjust one's choices in collaboration with others is a fundamental aspect of human nature. We discuss the forces that would have acted for and against the evolution of this ability for a large class of dilemmas and coordination problems that would have been faced by our hominin ancestors. In contrast to altruism and other non-fitness maximizing preferences, the ability to share intentions proliferates when rare without requiring repeated interaction or assortativity in matching.

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  • Newton, Jonathan, 2015. "Shared intentions: the evolution of collaboration," Working Papers 2015-05, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:syd:wpaper:2015-05
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Nax, Heinrich Harald & Newton, Jonathan, 2022. "Deep and shallow thinking in the long run," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(4), November.
    2. Song, Zhao & Guo, Hao & Jia, Danyang & Perc, Matjaž & Li, Xuelong & Wang, Zhen, 2021. "Third party interventions mitigate conflicts on interdependent networks," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 403(C).
    3. Rusch, Hannes, 2019. "The evolution of collaboration in symmetric 2×2-games with imperfect recognition of types," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 118-127.
    4. Yuval Heller & Christoph Kuzmics, 2019. "Renegotiation and Coordination with Private Values," Graz Economics Papers 2019-10, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    5. Heinrich H. Nax & Ryan O. Murphy & Stefano Duca & Dirk Helbing, 2017. "Contribution-Based Grouping under Noise," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-23, November.
    6. Heller, Yuval & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2020. "Communication, Renegotiation and Coordination with Private Values (Extended Version)," MPRA Paper 102926, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 26 Jul 2021.
    7. Newton, Jonathan & Wait, Andrew & Angus, Simon D., 2019. "Watercooler chat, organizational structure and corporate culture," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 354-365.
    8. Heller, Yuval & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2024. "Communication, renegotiation and coordination with private values," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 51-76.
    9. Newton, Jonathan & Sercombe, Damian, 2020. "Agency, potential and contagion," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 79-97.
    10. Jonathan Newton, 2019. "Agency Equilibrium," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-15, March.
    11. Khalil, Elias L., 2020. "The isomorphism hypothesis: The prisoner's dilemma as intertemporal allocation, and vice versa," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 735-746.
    12. Alger, Ingela & Lehmann, Laurent & Weibull, Jörgen W., 2018. "Evolution of preferences in group-structured populations: genes, guns, and culture," TSE Working Papers 18-888, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Oct 2019.
    13. Jonathan Newton, 2018. "Evolutionary Game Theory: A Renaissance," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-67, May.
    14. Mathias Spichtig & Martijn Egas, 2019. "When and How Does Mutation-Generated Variation Promote the Evolution of Cooperation?," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-17, January.
    15. Simon D Angus & Jonathan Newton, 2020. "Collaboration leads to cooperation on sparse networks," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-11, January.
    16. Bayer, Péter, 2023. "Evolutionarily stable networks," TSE Working Papers 23-1487, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    17. Eleonora Herrera-Medina & Antoni Riera Font, 2023. "A Multiagent Game Theoretic Simulation of Public Policy Coordination through Collaboration," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-20, August.
    18. Caleb M. Koch & Heinrich H. Nax, 2022. "Groundwater Usage and Strategic Complements: Part I (Instrumental Variables)," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-19, October.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Evolution; shared intentions; norm;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

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