Evolution of Cultural Groups and Persistent Parochialism

Bibliographic Data

ID2641398
AuthorsJae-Woo Kim (0000-0002-5428-8789, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume4
Issue2
Publication date2010-11-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueStructure and Dynamics eJournal of Anthropological and Related Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1554-3374 • E-ISSN: 1554-3374
PublisherCalifornia Digital Library (CDL) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5070/sd942003311
OpenAlexW146993301
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited15

Discriminators who have limited tolerance for helping dissimilar others are necessary for the evolution of costly cooperation in a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma. Existing research reports that trust in societies decreases when agents copy markers and tolerance from more successful others. Global cooperation is possible only in highly homogenized societies. Emergent cooperative societies are not robust against mutant defectors with tolerably similar markers. Our simulation experiments compare one society where each agent has immutable binary tags at the same dimension (‘caste society’) to the other where such markers are distributed across different dimensions (‘modern society’). In both societies, the majority of population display strong parochialism. However, cooperation is significantly stable in modern societies although members are more tolerant than those in caste societies. Modern societies are characterized by loosely coupled small-sized groups with different cultural markers. In terms of efficiency, they achieve higher levels of cooperation than do societies where agents change markers rapidly before defectors attack cooperative clusters

Economics · LEAPS · Parochialism · Political science · Cultural Differences and Values · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Law