The emergence of division of labour through decentralized social sanctioning.

Proc Biol Sci

Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea.

Published: October 2023

AI Article Synopsis

  • Human success as a species depends on our ability to form cooperative groups that specialize in different roles, particularly through trial and error learning.
  • A social dilemma arises when individuals prioritize more rewarding roles over essential but less attractive ones, risking the fulfillment of critical roles needed for group success.
  • The introduction of social norms, which guide behavior through reward redistribution, helps self-interested individuals achieve a balanced division of labor, ensuring all necessary roles are filled effectively.

Article Abstract

Human ecological success relies on our characteristic ability to flexibly self-organize into cooperative social groups, the most successful of which employ substantial specialization and division of labour. Unlike most other animals, humans learn by trial and error during their lives what role to take on. However, when some critical roles are more attractive than others, and individuals are self-interested, then there is a social dilemma: each individual would prefer others take on the critical but unremunerative roles so they may remain free to take one that pays better. But disaster occurs if all act thus and a critical role goes unfilled. In such situations learning an optimum role distribution may not be possible. Consequently, a fundamental question is: how can division of labour emerge in groups of self-interested lifetime-learning individuals? Here, we show that by introducing a model of social norms, which we regard as emergent patterns of decentralized social sanctioning, it becomes possible for groups of self-interested individuals to learn a productive division of labour involving all critical roles. Such social norms work by redistributing rewards within the population to disincentivize antisocial roles while incentivizing prosocial roles that do not intrinsically pay as well as others.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10598450PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.1716DOI Listing

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