Abstract:

Among the growing interest in the potential role that social learning processes play in the cultural evolution of prosocial traits, empirical evidence shows that intergroup competition can spread prosocial behaviors and beliefs across the group (e.g., Francois et al. 2018). Social learning based on payoff-biased imitation is another candidate mechanism of intergroup competition that can spread prosocial norms even when there is no conflict of interest between groups. However, research to date has not empirically examined the potential role of payoff-biased imitation. We conducted two laboratory experiments in which two groups faced a collective action problem, and manipulated the opportunity for the less successful group to observe the other one. Thus, we examined whether even costly prosocial behaviors can be imitated and spread within an unsuccessful group. We showed that the opportunity to observe a successful group increases cooperation rate at the 1st round and initially boosts prosociality (i.e., reciprocity), but this effect gradually decreases during the within-group process, which results in no significant difference in the overall cooperation rate. Further research is necessary to understand the roles of another possible pathway for the spread of human-specific prosocial norms.

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