Evolutionary game dynamics of controlled and automatic decision-making

TL;DR

This paper models the evolutionary dynamics of automatic versus controlled decision-making in populations, revealing conditions for dominance, coexistence, and oscillations influenced by environmental feedback and timescales.

Contribution

It introduces a novel evolutionary game model integrating dual-process cognition theories with environmental feedback, highlighting conditions for various population dynamics.

Findings

Automatic agents often dominate unless controlled agents improve resource use

Coexistence and bistability depend on environmental feedback and timescales

Limit cycles emerge under specific feedback conditions with long timescales

Abstract

We integrate dual-process theories of human cognition with evolutionary game theory to study the evolution of automatic and controlled decision-making processes. We introduce a model where agents who make decisions using either automatic or controlled processing compete with each other for survival. Agents using automatic processing act quickly and so are more likely to acquire resources, but agents using controlled processing are better planners and so make more effective use of the resources they have. Using the replicator equation, we characterize the conditions under which automatic or controlled agents dominate, when coexistence is possible, and when bistability occurs. We then extend the replicator equation to consider feedback between the state of the population and the environment. Under conditions where having a greater proportion of controlled agents either enriches the environment or enhances the competitive advantage of automatic agents, we find that limit cycles can occur, leading to persistent oscillations in the population dynamics. Critically, however, these limit cycles only emerge when feedback occurs on a sufficiently long time scale. Our results shed light on the connection between evolution and human cognition, and demonstrate necessary conditions for the rise and fall of rationality.