How Natural Selection Can Create Both Self- and Other-Regarding Preferences, and Networked Minds

TL;DR

This paper presents a theory explaining how evolutionary processes can lead to both self-regarding and other-regarding preferences, emphasizing the role of migration and spatial interactions in shaping social behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a model demonstrating how intergenerational migration influences the evolution of preferences, bridging biological competition with economic behavior.

Findings

Migration determines whether self- or other-regarding preferences evolve.

Spatial interactions and inheritance influence social behavior evolution.

The model explains the emergence of conditional cooperation and diverse utility functions.

Abstract

Biological competition is widely believed to result in the evolution of selfish preferences. The related concept of the `homo economicus' is at the core of mainstream economics. However, there is also experimental and empirical evidence for other-regarding preferences. Here we present a theory that explains both, self-regarding and other-regarding preferences. Assuming conditions promoting non-cooperative behaviour, we demonstrate that intergenerational migration determines whether evolutionary competition results in a `homo economicus' (showing self-regarding preferences) or a `homo socialis' (having other-regarding preferences). Our model assumes spatially interacting agents playing prisoner's dilemmas, who inherit a trait determining `friendliness', but mutations tend to undermine it. Reproduction is ruled by fitness-based selection without a cultural modification of reproduction rates. Our model calls for a complementary economic theory for `networked minds' (the `homo socialis') and lays the foundations for an evolutionarily grounded theory of other-regarding agents, explaining individually different utility functions as well as conditional cooperation.