Cognitive adaptations to criminal justice lead to "paranoid" norm obedience
Authored by Piotr M Patrzyk, Martin Takac
Date Published: 2017
DOI: 10.1177/1059712317693889
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Abstract
People often cooperate and obey norms in situations where it is clear
they cannot be caught and punished. Such behavior does not serve their
self-interest, as they are foregoing opportunities to exploit others
without any negative consequences. Hence, it is not clear how this
behavior could have evolved. Some previous explanations invoked the
existence of other-regarding preferences, moral motivation, or intrinsic
concern for social norms. In this study, we develop an agent-based model
illustrating that none of these is necessary for the emergence of
norm-abiding behavior. Our model suggests evolutionary pressure against
norm violators may lead to the emergence of a bias, causing agents to be
extremely sensitive to the probability of being caught. Because of this,
they often incorrectly classify anonymous situations as non-anonymous
ones and obey social norms due to the fear of being punished. In our
simulations, we show that cooperation is promoted by (1) the number of
interactions actually observed, (2) the strength of punishments against
norm violators, and most importantly, (3) the uncertainty in agent
classifications.
Tags
Agent-based models
Evolution
Cooperation
Reciprocity
rationality
heuristics
evolutionary psychology
perspective
Punishment
Natural-selection
Bias
Biases
Morality
Smoke detector principle
Error management
Decision
rules