title: The evolution of cooperation by social exclusion.
abstract: The exclusion of freeriders from common privileges or public acceptance is widely found in the real world. Current models on the evolution of cooperation with incentives mostly assume peer sanctioning, whereby a punisher imposes penalties on freeriders at a cost to itself. It is well known that such costly punishment has two substantial difficulties. First, a rare punishing cooperator barely subverts the asocial society of freeriders, and second, natural selection often eliminates punishing cooperators in the presence of non-punishing cooperators (namely, 'second-order' freeriders). We present a game-theoretical model of social exclusion in which a punishing cooperator can exclude freeriders from benefit sharing. We show that such social exclusion can overcome the above-mentioned difficulties even if it is costly and stochastic. The results do not require a genetic relationship, repeated interaction, reputation or group selection. Instead, only a limited number of freeriders are required to prevent the second-order freeriders from eroding the social immune system.
authors.affiliation: Evolution and Ecology Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Schlossplatz 1, 2631 Laxenburg, Austria. sasakit@iiasa.ac.at
authors.forename: Tatsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sasaki
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Uchida
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005716:Game Theory; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011678:Punishment; D012919:Social Behavior