Persistent cooperators in nature

JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY

卷:267

Article

Liu, Xinsheng¹  Guo, Wanlin¹ 

[1] Nanjing Univ Aeronaut & Astronaut, Inst Nanosci, Acad Frontier Sci, Nanjing 210016, Peoples R China

关键词: Cooperation;    Persistent cooperator (PC);    Public goods;    Punishment;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.09.034

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The evolution and maintenance of cooperation fascinated researchers for several decades Recently theoretical models and experimental evidence show that costly punishment may facilitate cooperation in human societies The puzzle how the costly punishment behaviour evolves can be solved under voluntary participation Could the punishers emerge if participation is compulsory? Is the punishment inevitably a selfish behaviour or an altruistic behaviour? The motivations behind punishment are still an enigma Based on public goods interactions we present a model in which Just a certain portion of the public good is divided equally among all members The other portion is distributed to contributors when paying a second cost The contributors who are willing to pay a second cost are called the persistent cooperators (PC) indicating their desire to retrieve the proportion of the payoff derived from their own contributions with persistent efforts We show that the persistent cooperators can be costly punishers which may account for the origin of human costly punishment behaviour under compulsory participation In this sense our models may show theoretically that the original motivation behind punishment is to retrieve deserved payoff from their own contributions a selfish incentive But the persisent cooperators can also flourish or dominate the population in other situations We list many real e examples in which contributors are the persistent cooperators and they benefit This indicates a simple norm promoting cooperation contributing more and gaining more (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved

【 授权许可】

Free