Abstract

Indirect reciprocity is a mechanism for cooperation, based on the idea that people act more pro-socially when their reputation is at stake. The corresponding models describe how reputations change over time, depending on the actions people take, and depending on the social norms they employ. The first part of the talk gives a brief overview of the field. It discusses how researchers in evolutionary biology have modeled the reputation dynamics within a population, and which social norms have been proposed to stabilize cooperation. The second part shows that these previously proposed norms fail when information is private and noisy. Finally, the third part discusses a model that allows exploring the evolution of direct and indirect reciprocity simultaneously. Using this model, we prove that there are relatively simple social norms of indirect reciprocity that are stable even for private and noisy information.

Reference

Christian Hilbe, “The evolution of indirect reciprocity under noisy and private information”, IAST General Seminar, Toulouse: IAST, June 11, 2021, 11:30–12:30, room Zoom.