Abstract
Humans are capable of solving cooperation problems following social norms. Social norms dictate appropriate behaviour and judgement on others in response to their previous actions and ...reputation. Recently, the so-called
leading eight
norms have been identified from many potential social norms that can sustain cooperation through a reputation-based indirect reciprocity mechanism. Despite indirect reciprocity being claimed to extend direct reciprocity in larger populations where direct experiences cannot be accumulated, the success of social norms have been analysed in models with global information and evolution. This study is the first to analyse the leading eight norms with local information and evolution. We find that the leading eight are robust against selfish players within most scenarios and can maintain a high level of cooperation also with local information and evolution. In fact, local evolution sustains cooperation under a wider set of conditions than global evolution, while local reputation does not hinder cooperation compared to global reputation. Four of the leading eight norms that do not reward justified defection offer better chances for cooperation with quick evolution, reputation with noise, larger networks, and when unconditional defectors enter the population.
Both classical social psychological theories and recent formal models of opinion differentiation and bi-polarization assign a prominent role to negative social influence. Negative influence is ...defined as shifts away from the opinion of others and hypothesized to be induced by discrepancy with or disliking of the source of influence. There is strong empirical support for the presence of positive social influence (a shift towards the opinion of others), but evidence that large opinion differences or disliking could trigger negative shifts is mixed. We examine positive and negative influence with controlled exposure to opinions of other individuals in one experiment and with opinion exchange in another study. Results confirm that similarities induce attraction, but results do not support that discrepancy or disliking entails negative influence. Instead, our findings suggest a robust positive linear relationship between opinion distance and opinion shifts.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
An important puzzle in social network research is to explain how macro-level structures emerge from micro-level network processes. Explaining the emergence and stability of structural groups in ...social networks is particularly difficult for two reasons. First, because groups are characterized both by high connectedness within (group cohesion) and lack of connectedness between them (group boundaries). Second, because a large number of theoretical micro-level network processes contribute to their emergence. We argue that traditional social network theories that are concerned with the evolution of positive relations (forces of attraction) are not sufficient to explain the emergence of groups because they lack mechanisms explaining the emergence of group boundaries. Models that additionally account for the evolution of negative ties (forces of repulsion) may be better suited to explain the emergence and stability of groups. We build a theoretical model and illustrate its usefulness by fitting stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) to empirical data of co-evolving networks of friendship and dislike among 479 secondary-school students. The SAOMs include a number of newly developed effects expressing the co-evolution between positive and negative ties. We then simulate networks from the estimated models to explore the micro-macro link. We find that a model that considers forces of attraction and repulsion simultaneously is better at explaining groups in social networks. In the long run, however, the empirically informed simulations generate networks that are too stylized to be realistic, raising further questions about model degeneracy and time heterogeneity of group processes.
Gossip is believed to be an informal device that alleviates the problem of cooperation in humans. Communication about previous acts and passing on reputational information could be valuable for ...conditional action in cooperation problems and pose a punishment threat to defectors. It is an open question, however, what kind of mechanisms can make gossip honest and credible and reputational information reliable, especially if intense competition for reputations does not exclusively dictate passing on honest information. We propose two mechanisms that could support the honesty and credibility of gossip under such a conflict of interest. One is the possibility of voluntary checks of received evaluative information from different sources and the other is social bonding between the sender and the receiver. We tested the efficiency of cross-checking and social bonding in a laboratory experiment where subjects played the Prisoner's Dilemma with gossip interactions. Although individuals had confidence in gossip in both conditions, we found that, overall, neither the opportunities for cross-checking nor bonding were able to maintain cooperation. Meanwhile, strong competition for reputation increased cooperation when individuals' payoffs depended greatly on their position relative to their rivals. Our results suggest that intense competition for reputation facilitates gossip functioning as an informal device promoting cooperation. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.
Direct and indirect reciprocity are good candidates to explain the fundamental problem of evolution of cooperation. We explore the conditions under which different types of reciprocity gain dominance ...and their performances in sustaining cooperation in the PD played on simple networks. We confirm that direct reciprocity gains dominance over indirect reciprocity strategies also in larger populations, as long as it has no memory constraints. In the absence of direct reciprocity, or when its memory is flawed, different forms of indirect reciprocity strategies are able to dominate and to support cooperation. We show that indirect reciprocity relying on social capital inherent in closed triads is the best competitor among them, outperforming indirect reciprocity that uses information from any source. Results hold in a wide range of conditions with different evolutionary update rules, extent of evolutionary pressure, initial conditions, population size, and density.
Problems of cooperation are frequent among living organisms, but they are difficult to solve. Humans have been able to produce large-scale cooperation among unrelated individuals through reputation ...systems. A challenging puzzle, however, is how reputation can guide behavior if in most cases it is not shared publicly and is assigned to others privately. We confirm that it is difficult to obtain cooperation among agents playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma when reputations are individually assigned. We propose that third-party communication (gossip) can overcome this difficulty, but only under specific conditions concerning its content, amount and persistence. We show that—in order to sustain cooperation—gossip should not only be about private evaluations of others but should also include perspective taking and exchange of information about tolerance thresholds to support cooperation. This perspective taking reputational strategy can propagate and establish cooperation in the population independent of gossip frequency and population size, under various selection mechanisms of communication partners and targets, and assumptions concerning agents’ memory.
Abstract
A human solution to the problem of cooperation is the maintenance of informal reputation hierarchies. Reputational information contributes to cooperation by providing guidelines about ...previous group-beneficial or free-rider behaviour in social dilemma interactions. How reputation information could be credible, however, remains a puzzle. We test two potential safeguards to ensure credibility: (i) reputation is a scarce resource and (ii) it is not earned for direct benefits. We test these solutions in a laboratory experiment in which participants played two-person Prisoner’s Dilemma games without partner selection, could observe some other interactions, and could communicate reputational information about possible opponents to each other. Reputational information clearly influenced cooperation decisions. Although cooperation was not sustained at a high level in any of the conditions, the possibility of exchanging third-party information was able to temporarily increase the level of strategic cooperation when reputation was a scarce resource and reputational scores were directly translated into monetary benefits. We found that competition for monetary rewards or unrestricted non-monetary reputational rewards helped the reputation system to be informative. Finally, we found that high reputational scores are reinforced further as they are rewarded with positive messages, and positive gossip was leading to higher reputations.
While all species are unique, only humans have been able to develop complex tools and technology, and to place energy and their environment under control. Social learning and extrasomatic storage of ...information enabled rapid development in recent evolutionary times. Our argument is that human uniqueness lies in human sociality. Namely, large-scale and widespread cooperation, the establishment and maintenance of social order, the use of language as a communication tool, advanced social cognition, and large social complexity built on social norms are characteristics of unique human sociality. Here we claim that reputation is a human invention that could have largely contributed to the development of these characteristics. Reputation-based mechanisms are fundamental to the emergence and maintenance of large-scale cooperation between non-closely related individuals by informing partner selection and conditional actions towards others. Reputation is the basis of informal social hierarchies that provide a guideline to maintain social order. Reputation concerns and gossip about absent others constitute a large part of human communication. This way, and with increased abilities of social cognition, we keep account of a larger set of individuals, and can be directed by norms that guide proper behavior and regulate interactions towards norm violators and their punishers. To provide a nuanced view on how reputation became key to all social features of human uniqueness, we consider its roles and dimensions starting from individual life and going towards interdependencies in dyads, small groups, intergroup relations, and large-scale societies. Throughout this journey from individual to societal life, we speculate that reputation has reached its central importance in small group life and not at a lower or higher level of complexity.
Despite being internally fragmented by clashes of paradigms, sociology textbooks and introductory courses show a remarkable similarity in their content, while they share a peculiar neglect of small ...scale societies, non-human social relations, as well as evolutionary explanations. The mistreatment is explained by the strong position of sociology in the nature vs. nurture debate, by paradigmatic and ideologically motivated condemnations, by the later misuse of Social Darwinism, by certain unresolved issues of evolutionary explanations of human sociality, and by epistemological critiques of evolutionary explanations. The current study assesses the extent of this avoidance in sociology by three methods: a review of major sociology textbooks, a descriptive quantitative text analysis of introductory course outlines at top ranked universities, and a keyword search in the all-time most emblematic classical books in sociology. In reaction to this mistreatment, the benefits of synthesis of sociological explanations with evolutionary thinking are discussed.
Abstract
High school track choice determines college access in many countries. We hypothesize that some qualified students avoid the college-bound track in high school simply because they ...overestimate admission requirements. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a randomized field experiment that communicated the admission standards of local secondary schools on the academic track to students in Hungary before the application deadline. We targeted the subset of students (“seeds”) who occupied the most central position in the classroom-social networks, aiming to detect both direct effects on the track choice of targeted seeds and spillover effects on their untreated peers. We found neither a direct effect nor a spillover effect on students’ applications or admissions on average. Further analyses, however, revealed theoretically plausible heterogeneity in the direct causal effect of the intervention on the track choice of targeted seeds. Providing information about admission standards increased applications and admissions to secondary schools on the academic track among seeds who had a pre-existing interest in the academic track but were unsure of their chances of admission. This demonstrates that publicizing admissions standards can set students on a more ambitious educational trajectory. We discuss the implications for theory and policy.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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