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Balancing selfishness and norm conformity can explain human behavior in large-scale prisoner's dilemma games and can poise human groups near criticality

John Realpe-Gómez*

Giulia Andrighetto

Luis Gustavo Nardin

Javier Antonio Montoya

  • Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA; Instituto de Matemáticas Aplicadas, Universidad de Cartagena, Cartagena de Indias, Bolívar 13001, Colombia; and SGT Inc., 7701 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, Maryland 20770, USA

  • Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome 00185, Italy; Mälardalen University, Högskoleplan 1, 721 23 Västerås, Sweden; and Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13, 101 31 Stockholm, Sweden

  • Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome 00185, Italy and Brandenburg University of Technology, 03046 Cottbus, Brandenburg, Germany

  • Grupo de Modelado Computacional, Universidad de Cartagena, Cartagena de Indias, Bolívar 13001, Colombia and The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Strada Costiera 11, 34151 Trieste, Italy

  • *john.realpe@gmail.com
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Phys. Rev. E 97, 042321 – Published 30 April, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.97.042321

Abstract

Cooperation is central to the success of human societies as it is crucial for overcoming some of the most pressing social challenges of our time; still, how human cooperation is achieved and may persist is a main puzzle in the social and biological sciences. Recently, scholars have recognized the importance of social norms as solutions to major local and large-scale collective action problems, from the management of water resources to the reduction of smoking in public places to the change in fertility practices. Yet a well-founded model of the effect of social norms on human cooperation is still lacking. Using statistical-physics techniques and integrating findings from cognitive and behavioral sciences, we present an analytically tractable model in which individuals base their decisions to cooperate both on the economic rewards they obtain and on the degree to which their action complies with social norms. Results from this parsimonious model are in agreement with observations in recent large-scale experiments with humans. We also find the phase diagram of the model and show that the experimental human group is poised near a critical point, a regime where recent work suggests living systems respond to changing external conditions in an efficient and coordinated manner.

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Phys. Rev. E 97, 042321– Published 30 April, 2018
  • Received 18 September 2017
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