English

Beliefs and Cooperation

adap-org 2009-09-25 v1 Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems

Abstract

Individuals in groups must often choose between acting selfishly and cooperating for the common good. The choices they make are based on their beliefs on how they expect their actions to affect others. We show that for a broad set of beliefs and group characteristics cooperation can appear spontaneously in non-cooperative groups after very long periods of time. When delays in information are unavoidable the group dynamics acquires a wide repertoire of behaviors, ranging from opportunistic oscillations to bursty chaos, thus excluding the possibility of sustained cooperation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.adap-org/9405001,
  title  = {Beliefs and Cooperation},
  author = {Bernardo A. Huberman and Natalie S. Glance},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:adap-org/9405001},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

26 pages, also available by anonymous ftp at parcftp.xerox.com in the directory pub/dynamics. Hardcopy requests to glance@parc.xerox.com

R2 v1 2026-07-22T07:40:30.822Z