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Does social learning promote cooperation in social dilemmas?

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Abstract

In this study, we analyze how emergence of cooperation is related to social learning. Cooperation is an example of social behavior. It is frequency-dependent that is the success of a particular behavior depends on the number of individuals adopting each behavioral trait. We study how social learning can affect the evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas represented by two well-known games: Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) and Snowdrift (SD). We show that, in the PD game, increase in the proportion of social learners leads to the alleviation of the social dilemma. Whereas, in the SD game increasing the proportion of social learners does not always lead to the alleviation of the social dilemma, that is there is no simple monotonic relation between social learning and the weakening of the social dilemma.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Social Sciences University of Ankara, Ankara, Turkey

    Ozgur Aydogmus & Erkan Gürpinar

  2. Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences University of Ankara, Ankara, Turkey

    Hasan Cagatay

Authors
  1. Ozgur Aydogmus
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  2. Hasan Cagatay
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  3. Erkan Gürpinar
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Correspondence to Ozgur Aydogmus.

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Aydogmus, O., Cagatay, H. & Gürpinar, E. Does social learning promote cooperation in social dilemmas?. J Econ Interact Coord 15, 633–648 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11403-019-00254-5

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