Threshold behavior of a social norm in response to error proneness

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Le, Quang Anh, Baek, Seung Ki
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Le, Quang Anh
Baek, Seung Ki
author_facet Le, Quang Anh
Baek, Seung Ki
contents A social norm defines what is good and what is bad in social contexts, as well as what to do based on such assessments. A stable social norm should be maintained against errors committed by its players. In addition, individuals may have different probabilities of errors in following the norm, and a social norm would be unstable if it benefited those who do not follow the norm carefully. In this work, we show that Simple Standing, which has been known to resist errors and mutants successfully, actually exhibits threshold behavior. That is, in a population of individuals playing the donation game according to Simple Standing, the residents can suppress the invasion of mutants with higher error proneness only if the residents' own error proneness is sufficiently low. Otherwise, the population will be invaded by mutants that commit assessment errors more frequently, and a series of such invasions will eventually undermine the existing social norm. This study suggests that the stability analysis of a social norm may have a different picture if the probability of error itself is regarded as an individual attribute.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_23907
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Threshold behavior of a social norm in response to error proneness
Le, Quang Anh
Baek, Seung Ki
Populations and Evolution
Physics and Society
A social norm defines what is good and what is bad in social contexts, as well as what to do based on such assessments. A stable social norm should be maintained against errors committed by its players. In addition, individuals may have different probabilities of errors in following the norm, and a social norm would be unstable if it benefited those who do not follow the norm carefully. In this work, we show that Simple Standing, which has been known to resist errors and mutants successfully, actually exhibits threshold behavior. That is, in a population of individuals playing the donation game according to Simple Standing, the residents can suppress the invasion of mutants with higher error proneness only if the residents' own error proneness is sufficiently low. Otherwise, the population will be invaded by mutants that commit assessment errors more frequently, and a series of such invasions will eventually undermine the existing social norm. This study suggests that the stability analysis of a social norm may have a different picture if the probability of error itself is regarded as an individual attribute.
title Threshold behavior of a social norm in response to error proneness
topic Populations and Evolution
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23907