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Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game

While cooperation and risk aversion are considered to be evolutionarily advantageous in many circumstances, and selfish or risky behaviour can bring negative consequences for individuals and the community at large, selfish and risk-seeking behaviour is still often observed in human societies. In thi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Testori, Martina, Eisenbarth, Hedwig, Hoyle, Rebecca B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8782365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35061703
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261340
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author Testori, Martina
Eisenbarth, Hedwig
Hoyle, Rebecca B.
author_facet Testori, Martina
Eisenbarth, Hedwig
Hoyle, Rebecca B.
author_sort Testori, Martina
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description While cooperation and risk aversion are considered to be evolutionarily advantageous in many circumstances, and selfish or risky behaviour can bring negative consequences for individuals and the community at large, selfish and risk-seeking behaviour is still often observed in human societies. In this paper we consider whether there are environmental and social conditions that favour selfish risk-seeking individuals within a community and whether tolerating such individuals may provide benefits to the community itself in some circumstances. We built an agent-based model including two types of agent—selfish risk-seeking and generous risk-averse—that harvest resources from the environment and share them (or not) with their community. We found that selfish risk-seekers can outperform generous risk-averse agents in conditions where their survival is moderately challenged, supporting the theory that selfish and risk-seeking traits combined are not dysfunctional but rather can be evolutionarily advantageous for agents. The benefit for communities is less clear, but when generous agents are unconditionally cooperative communities with a greater proportion of selfish risk-seeking agents grow to a larger population size suggesting some advantage to the community overall.
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spelling pubmed-87823652022-01-22 Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game Testori, Martina Eisenbarth, Hedwig Hoyle, Rebecca B. PLoS One Research Article While cooperation and risk aversion are considered to be evolutionarily advantageous in many circumstances, and selfish or risky behaviour can bring negative consequences for individuals and the community at large, selfish and risk-seeking behaviour is still often observed in human societies. In this paper we consider whether there are environmental and social conditions that favour selfish risk-seeking individuals within a community and whether tolerating such individuals may provide benefits to the community itself in some circumstances. We built an agent-based model including two types of agent—selfish risk-seeking and generous risk-averse—that harvest resources from the environment and share them (or not) with their community. We found that selfish risk-seekers can outperform generous risk-averse agents in conditions where their survival is moderately challenged, supporting the theory that selfish and risk-seeking traits combined are not dysfunctional but rather can be evolutionarily advantageous for agents. The benefit for communities is less clear, but when generous agents are unconditionally cooperative communities with a greater proportion of selfish risk-seeking agents grow to a larger population size suggesting some advantage to the community overall. Public Library of Science 2022-01-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8782365/ /pubmed/35061703 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261340 Text en © 2022 Testori et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Testori, Martina
Eisenbarth, Hedwig
Hoyle, Rebecca B.
Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game
title Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game
title_full Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game
title_fullStr Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game
title_full_unstemmed Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game
title_short Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game
title_sort selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8782365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35061703
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261340
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