When cooperating, human groups can poise near a critical point – similarly to highly organized biological systems, like those of bees or ants – where recent work suggests living systems respond to changing external conditions in an efficient and coordinated manner.
A new statistical physics model demonstrates the crucial role that social norms play in promoting cooperation and its stability. The study has been published in Physical Review E. and appears also as a CNR press release.
When cooperating, human groups can poise near a critical point – similarly to highly organized biological systems, like those of bees or ants – where recent work suggests living systems respond to changing external conditions in an efficient and coordinated manner.
A new statistical physics model demonstrates the crucial role that social norms play in promoting cooperation and its stability. The study has been published in Physical Review E.
The study, conducted by the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in collaboration with the NASA Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the University of Cartagena in Columbia, brings to light, for the first time, the existence of a critical point in human cooperative systems, demonstrating the crucial role played out by social norms. “The concept of critical points has been adapted from statistical physics”, explains Giulia Andrighetto, researcher at ISTC-CNR “and indicates the state of a system that is exactly on the boundary between two different phases, analogous to where the distinction between vapor and liquid water disappears, which can increase adaptability of the system to changing external conditions. In our work we demonstrate how human groups who cooperate can reach a critical point, which comes when members consider the social norms of their group”.
To come to this result, the research team developed a statistical physics model of human cooperation. “In the model, agents decide to cooperate or not, balancing egoism and conformity to social norms. In this way we were able to reproduce the choices that the people had made in recent large-scale laboratory experiments conducted in Spain by Gracia-Lázaro and colleagues, in which they were asked to participate in the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’, the classic game used to study cooperation”, continues Giulia Andrighetto. “The results of our work confirm and provide experimental support to the idea that human beings, deciding whether to cooperate or not, balance the possible economic gains of a choice and compliance with the norms ruling their group. In the end, the study allowed us to highlight the existence of a critical point in human cooperative systems, until now only found in highly social animal groups like bees or ants, characteristics which would explain the great flexibility and capacity of those systems to adapt to external changes”.
The study therefore evaluates the mechanisms and the dynamics, which regulate humans as social animals. “We hope our results can contribute to a better understanding of human cooperation and how to promote it. Moreover, research of this kind could provide instruments for governance in the future that would be useful for promoting the fine balance between individual and collective interests that is the base of human cooperation”, concludes Andrighetto. John Realpe-Gómez, Giulia Andrighetto, Luis Gustavo Nardin, Javier Antonio Montoya (2018), ‘Balancing selfishness and norm conformity can explain human behavior in large-scale prisoner’s dilemma games and can poise human groups near criticality’
Phys. Rev. E 97 042321, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.97.042321 https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.97.042321
Per informazioni: Giulia Andrighetto, Cnr-Istc, tel. 06/ 44362370(2), e-mail: giulia.andrighetto@istc.cnr.it
