Exact conditions for evolutionary stability in indirect reciprocity under noise

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Glynatsi, Nikoleta E., Hilbe, Christian, Murase, Yohsuke
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866916945776869376
author Glynatsi, Nikoleta E.
Hilbe, Christian
Murase, Yohsuke
author_facet Glynatsi, Nikoleta E.
Hilbe, Christian
Murase, Yohsuke
contents Indirect reciprocity is a key mechanism for large-scale cooperation. This mechanism captures the insight that in part, people help others to build and maintain a good reputation. To enable such cooperation, appropriate social norms are essential. They specify how individuals should act based on each others' reputations, and how reputations are updated in response to individual actions. Although previous work has identified several norms that sustain cooperation, a complete analytical characterization of all evolutionarily stable norms remains lacking, especially when assessments or actions are noisy. In this study, we provide such a characterization for the public assessment regime. This characterization reproduces known results, such as the leading eight norms, but it extends to more general cases, allowing for various types of errors and additional actions including costly punishment. We also identify norms that impose a fixed payoff on any mutant strategy, analogous to the zero-determinant strategies in direct reciprocity. These results offer a rigorous foundation for understanding the evolution of cooperation through indirect reciprocity and the critical role of social norms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_08006
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exact conditions for evolutionary stability in indirect reciprocity under noise
Glynatsi, Nikoleta E.
Hilbe, Christian
Murase, Yohsuke
Populations and Evolution
Computer Science and Game Theory
Indirect reciprocity is a key mechanism for large-scale cooperation. This mechanism captures the insight that in part, people help others to build and maintain a good reputation. To enable such cooperation, appropriate social norms are essential. They specify how individuals should act based on each others' reputations, and how reputations are updated in response to individual actions. Although previous work has identified several norms that sustain cooperation, a complete analytical characterization of all evolutionarily stable norms remains lacking, especially when assessments or actions are noisy. In this study, we provide such a characterization for the public assessment regime. This characterization reproduces known results, such as the leading eight norms, but it extends to more general cases, allowing for various types of errors and additional actions including costly punishment. We also identify norms that impose a fixed payoff on any mutant strategy, analogous to the zero-determinant strategies in direct reciprocity. These results offer a rigorous foundation for understanding the evolution of cooperation through indirect reciprocity and the critical role of social norms.
title Exact conditions for evolutionary stability in indirect reciprocity under noise
topic Populations and Evolution
Computer Science and Game Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08006