Evolutionary advantages of adaptive rewarding

TL;DR

This paper explores how adaptive rewarding, which self-organizes based on cooperation success, offers evolutionary benefits and complex social dynamics, but also faces limitations compared to adaptive punishment.

Contribution

It introduces a model where rewarding behavior self-organizes with cooperation success, revealing new social dynamics and evolutionary advantages.

Findings

Adaptive rewarding promotes cooperation through self-organized mechanisms.

Complex spatial patterns emerge, including territorial battles and coexistence.

Over-aggression in adaptive rewarding can hinder optimal cooperation.

Abstract

Our wellbeing depends as much on our personal success, as it does on the success of our society. The realization of this fact makes cooperation a very much needed trait. Experiments have shown that rewards can elevate our readiness to cooperate, but since giving a reward inevitably entails paying a cost for it, the emergence and stability of such behavior remain elusive. Here we show that allowing for the act of rewarding to self-organize in dependence on the success of cooperation creates several evolutionary advantages that instill new ways through which collaborative efforts are promoted. Ranging from indirect territorial battle to the spontaneous emergence and destruction of coexistence, phase diagrams and the underlying spatial patterns reveal fascinatingly reach social dynamics that explains why this costly behavior has evolved and persevered. Comparisons with adaptive punishment, however, uncover an Achilles heel of adaptive rewarding that is due to over-aggression, which in turn hinders optimal utilization of network reciprocity. This may explain why, despite of its success, rewarding is not as firmly weaved into our societal organization as punishment.