The Evolution of Incentives and Social Structure under Imperfect Information

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Despite the common conception of nature as "red in tooth and claw," almost all organisms, from soil bacteria to primates -including humans-, must cooperate with others to survive and reproduce. How such cooperation persists evolutionarily despite conflicts of interests is a central question in biology. The problem is exacerbated when individuals face uncertainty about factors affecting their payoffs, because this creates incentives for deception that would undermine cooperation. This project will study how incentives for cooperation and the related social structure evolve when individuals face uncertainty and have private information. The PI and his colleagues will use a suite of mathematical tools originally developed in economics, called mechanism design theory. Mechanism design studies how appropriate incentive structures can be set up to prevent self-interested individuals from deceiving each other and undermining the desired outcome. However, classic applications of mechanism design theory, such as the design of auctions and trading schemes, usually presuppose an agent (such as a government) with the power of setting the "rules of the game". In contrast, natural selection acts on individuals that can alter the game only in limited ways by themselves. Hence, the evolved "rules of the game" represent the outcome of natural selection working in a decentralized way through individuals. The aim of this project is to understand how natural selection thus organizes interactions between individuals to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. The project's interdisciplinary approach will not only further our understanding of fundamental evolutionary processes, but also help in understanding how we in human societies can cooperate without relying on a central authority to tackle problems such as global climate change. It will also produce new results in social evolution theory that are sure to capture the public's attention, and will therefore aid in furthering science education and public understanding of science.