Social Contracts on Social Networks: Local Patterns of Interaction, Local Strategy Dynamics and the Emergence of Reciprocity

Abstract

Cooperation has been vital to the evolution of all living things, including single-celled organisms (Velicer, 2005, 2003; Velicer and Stredwick, 2002; Crespi, 2001; Velicer et al., 2000; Boorman and Levitt, 1980), fish (Brosnan et al., 2003; Dugatkin, 1991, 1992, 1997; Milinski, 1987), birds (Brown and Brown, 1996; Faaborg et al., 1995), canines (Creel and Creel, 2002; Courchamp and Macdonald, 2001; Fentress and Ryon, 1986), felines (Caro, 1994; Packer and Pusey, 1982), non-human primates (Brosnan and de Waal, 2003; de Waal, 1996, 1982; Harcourt and de Waal, 1992; Chapais, 1992), and humans (Ostrom et al., 1999; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Johnson et al., 2003).

Even so, the evolution of cooperative, prosocial behavior under circumstances in which individual interests are at odds with common interests, (circumstances characterized as social dilemmas (Gotts et al., 2003; Dawes and Messick, 2000)), remains a largely unsolved, multidisciplinary puzzle (Hammerstein, 2003). Approaches to these types of problems have, for the most part, been applications of evolutionary game theory (Gintis, 2000; Hofbauer and Sigmund, 1998; Maynard-Smith, 1982; Maynard-Smith and Price, 1973; Trivers, 1971; Hamilton, 1967; von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944) and due to their importance as generalized models of many important socio-economic situations (Tomassini, 2006), iconic games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma have been widely employed as metaphors (Doebeli and Hauert, 2005; Axelrod and Hamilton, 1981; Axelrod, 1984; Nowak and Sigmund, 1992, 2004; Nowak and May, 1992; Maynard-Smith, 1982; Sugden, 1986).