Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91, Stockholm, Sweden.
School of Mathematics, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UG, UK.
Sci Rep. 2019 Nov 8;9(1):16319. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-52781-7.
In social interactions, including cooperation and conflict, individuals can adjust their behaviour over the shorter term through learning within a generation, and natural selection can change behaviour over the longer term of many generations. Here we investigate the evolution of cognitive bias by individuals investing into a project that delivers joint benefits. For members of a group that learn how much to invest using the costs and benefits they experience in repeated interactions, we show that overestimation of the cost of investing can evolve. The bias causes individuals to invest less into the project. Our explanation is that learning responds to immediate rather than longer-term rewards. There are thus cognitive limitations in learning, which can be seen as bounded rationality. Over a time horizon of several rounds of interaction, individuals respond to each other's investments, for instance by partially compensating for another's shortfall. However, learning individuals fail to strategically take into account that social partners respond in this way. Learning instead converges to a one-shot Nash equilibrium of a game with perceived rewards as payoffs. Evolution of bias can then compensate for the cognitive limitations of learning.
在社交互动中，包括合作和冲突，个体可以通过在一代人的时间内进行学习来调整短期行为，而自然选择可以在多代人的时间内改变行为。在这里，我们通过个体投资于一个能带来共同利益的项目来研究认知偏差的进化。对于通过在反复互动中经历的成本和收益来学习如何投资的群体成员，我们表明，投资成本的高估可能会进化。这种偏差导致个体对项目的投资减少。我们的解释是，学习对即时而不是长期奖励做出反应。因此，学习存在认知限制，可以看作是有限理性。在几轮互动的时间范围内，个体对彼此的投资做出反应，例如通过部分弥补另一个人的不足。然而，学习的个体未能从策略上考虑到社会伙伴会以这种方式做出反应。相反，学习收敛到具有感知奖励作为收益的博弈的一次性纳什均衡。然后，偏差的进化可以弥补学习的认知限制。
