Heuristics facilitates the evolution of transitive inference and social hierarchy in a large group

TL;DR

This study explores how simplified heuristics for transitive inference, called reference TI, evolve in large groups, enabling animals to recognize social hierarchies efficiently without complex cognition.

Contribution

The paper introduces the concept of reference TI as a heuristic approach and demonstrates its evolutionary viability in large groups through simulations.

Findings

Reference TI can evolve with various numbers of reference members.

Shared reference members facilitate information sharing and hierarchy formation.

TI outperforms immediate inference in establishing social hierarchy.

Abstract

Transitive inference (TI) refers to social cognition that facilitates the discernment of unknown relationships between individuals using known relationships. It is extensively reported that TI evolves in animals living in a large group because TI could assess relative rank without deducing all dyadic relationships, which averts costly fights.The relationships in a large group become so complex that social cognition may not be developed adequately to handle such complexity. If all group members apply TI to all possible members in the group, TI is supposed to require extremely highly developed cognitive abilities especially in a large group. Instead of developing cognitive abilities significantly, animals may apply simplified TI we call reference TI in this study as heuristic approaches. The reference TI allows members to recognize and remember social interactions only among a set of reference members rather than all potential members. Our study assumes that information processes in the reference TI comprises 1) the number of reference members based on which individuals infer transitively, 2) the number of reference members shared by the same strategists, and 3) memory capacity. We examined how information processes evolve in a large group using evolutionary simulations in the hawk-dove game. Information processes with almost any numbers of reference members could evolve in a large group as long as the numbers of shared reference member are high because information from the others' experiences is shared. TI dominates immediate inference, which assesses relative rank on direct interactions, because TI could establish social hierarchy more rapidly applying information from others' experiences.