Harmonizing Individual and Group Interests: A Strategy for Fostering Cooperation in Social Dilemma Games

Why humans cooperate remains an open question. Researchers use social dilemma games to try and find some answers. Unfortunately, over the last 3 decades arguably only slow progress has been made. This is due to a reliance on just fitness to evolve strategies which removes any player decision process. In this paper, we propose a new approach to evolving strategies in social dilemma games. This approach combines individual interests with group interests and injects a formal decision process into strategy selection. It combines the ideas of Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, and the work of Nobel laureate Lloyd Shapley. Our results from public goods game experiments show our approach can produce dramatically different strategy evolution but one which matches player preferences. This new approach provides a better framework for investigating cooperation in human populations.