Artikel
Social learning strategies and cooperative behaviour: Evidence of payoff bias, but not prestige or conformity, in a social dilemma game
Human cooperation, occurring without reciprocation and between unrelated individuals in large populations, represents an evolutionary puzzle. One potential explanation is that cooperative behaviour may be transmitted between individuals via social learning. Using an online social dilemma experiment, we find evidence that participants' contributions were more consistent with payoff-biased transmission than prestige-biased transmission or conformity. We also found some evidence for lower cooperation (i) when exposed to social information about peer cooperation levels than without such information, and (ii) in the prisoners' dilemma game compared to the snowdrift game. A simulation model established that the observed cooperation was more likely to be caused by participants' general propensity to cooperate than by the effect of social learning strategies employed within the experiment, but that this cooperative propensity could be reduced through selection. Overall, our results support previous experimental evidence indicating the role of payoff-biased transmission in explaining cooperative behaviour, but we find that this effect was small and was overwhelmed by participants' general propensity for cooperation.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Journal: Games ; ISSN: 2073-4336 ; Volume: 12 ; Year: 2021 ; Issue: 4 ; Pages: 1-26 ; Basel: MDPI
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
- Subject
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conformity
cooperation
cultural evolution
payoff
prestige
prisoner's dilemma
snowdrift
social learning
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Watson, Robin
Morgan, Thomas J. H.
Kendal, Rachel L.
van de Vyver, Julie
Kendal, Jeremy
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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MDPI
- (where)
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Basel
- (when)
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2021
- DOI
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doi:10.3390/g12040089
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Artikel
Associated
- Watson, Robin
- Morgan, Thomas J. H.
- Kendal, Rachel L.
- van de Vyver, Julie
- Kendal, Jeremy
- MDPI
Time of origin
- 2021
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