title: Indirect reciprocity is sensitive to costs of information transfer.
abstract: How natural selection can promote cooperative or altruistic behavior is a fundamental question in biological and social sciences. One of the persuasive mechanisms is "indirect reciprocity," working through reputation: cooperative behavior can prevail because the behavior builds the donor's good reputation and then s/he receives some reciprocal benefits from someone else in the community. However, an important piece missed in the previous studies is that the reputation-building process requires substantial cognitive abilities such as communication skills, potentially causing a loss of biological fitness. Here, by mathematical analyses and individual-based computer simulations, we show that natural selection never favors indirect reciprocal cooperation in the presence of the cost of reputation building, regardless of the cost-to-benefit ratio of cooperation or moral assessment rules (social norms). Our results highlight the importance of considering the cost of high-level cognitive abilities in studies of the evolution of humans' and animals' social behavior.
authors.affiliation: Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. shinsuke.szk@gmail.com
authors.forename: Shinsuke
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: Hiromichi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kimura