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Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence
Social organisms often need to know how much to trust others to cooperate. Organisms can expect cooperation from another organism that depends on them (i.e. stake or fitness interdependence), but how do individuals assess fitness interdependence? Here, we extend fitness interdependence into a signal...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8487747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34601912 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0292 |
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author | Barclay, Pat Bliege Bird, Rebecca Roberts, Gilbert Számadó, Szabolcs |
author_facet | Barclay, Pat Bliege Bird, Rebecca Roberts, Gilbert Számadó, Szabolcs |
author_sort | Barclay, Pat |
collection | PubMed |
description | Social organisms often need to know how much to trust others to cooperate. Organisms can expect cooperation from another organism that depends on them (i.e. stake or fitness interdependence), but how do individuals assess fitness interdependence? Here, we extend fitness interdependence into a signalling context: costly helping behaviour can honestly signal one's stake in others, such that those who help are trusted more. We present a mathematical model in which agents help others based on their stake in the recipient's welfare, and recipients use that information to assess whom to trust. At equilibrium, helping is a costly signal of stake: helping is worthwhile for those who value the recipient (and thus will repay any trust), but is not worthwhile for those who do not value the recipient (and thus will betray the trust). Recipients demand signals when they value the signallers less and when the cost of betrayed trust is higher; signal costs are higher when signallers have more incentive to defect. Signalling systems are more likely when the trust games resemble Prisoner's Dilemmas, Stag Hunts or Harmony Games, and are less likely in Snowdrift Games. Furthermore, we find that honest signals need not benefit recipients and can even occur between hostile parties. By signalling their interdependence, organisms benefit from increased trust, even when no future interactions will occur. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8487747 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84877472022-06-13 Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence Barclay, Pat Bliege Bird, Rebecca Roberts, Gilbert Számadó, Szabolcs Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles Social organisms often need to know how much to trust others to cooperate. Organisms can expect cooperation from another organism that depends on them (i.e. stake or fitness interdependence), but how do individuals assess fitness interdependence? Here, we extend fitness interdependence into a signalling context: costly helping behaviour can honestly signal one's stake in others, such that those who help are trusted more. We present a mathematical model in which agents help others based on their stake in the recipient's welfare, and recipients use that information to assess whom to trust. At equilibrium, helping is a costly signal of stake: helping is worthwhile for those who value the recipient (and thus will repay any trust), but is not worthwhile for those who do not value the recipient (and thus will betray the trust). Recipients demand signals when they value the signallers less and when the cost of betrayed trust is higher; signal costs are higher when signallers have more incentive to defect. Signalling systems are more likely when the trust games resemble Prisoner's Dilemmas, Stag Hunts or Harmony Games, and are less likely in Snowdrift Games. Furthermore, we find that honest signals need not benefit recipients and can even occur between hostile parties. By signalling their interdependence, organisms benefit from increased trust, even when no future interactions will occur. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’. The Royal Society 2021-11-22 2021-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8487747/ /pubmed/34601912 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0292 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Articles Barclay, Pat Bliege Bird, Rebecca Roberts, Gilbert Számadó, Szabolcs Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence |
title | Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence |
title_full | Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence |
title_fullStr | Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence |
title_full_unstemmed | Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence |
title_short | Cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence |
title_sort | cooperating to show that you care: costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8487747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34601912 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0292 |
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