This research project studies the evolution of cognitive capacities for human agents and the implications for strategic behavior in potentially cooperative social interactions. The research starts from the idea that people are political beings with special purpose information processing capacities for dealing with cooperative and conflictual encounters. The baseline environment for these interactions is taken from evolutionary game theory in which individuals are randomly matched to play a variety of 2-person games, including prisoner's dilemma, games of pure conflict and cooperative games. What is new and different in this research is that an actor's strategy is contingent on the counterpart's characteristics (e.g., strength or frequency of cooperative behavior). Moreover actors have a capacity to verify or misrepresent their own characteristics. The communication and cognitive abilities of those actors are subject to evolutionary selection. All of this activity takes place in well defined computer simulations that run through tens of thousands of generations with large groups of individuals. The results illustrate the conditions under which cooperation can emerge in a variety of environments.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SES)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
9808041
Program Officer
Frank P. Scioli Jr.
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
1998-08-01
Budget End
2001-07-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
1998
Total Cost
$126,164
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Oregon Eugene
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Eugene
State
OR
Country
United States
Zip Code
97403