Coevolution of cooperation and language

Abstract

As a cooperative act decreases an individual's fitness for others to benefit, it is expected to be selected against by natural selection. That, how contrary to this naive expectation cooperation has evolved, is a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology and social sciences. Here, by introducing a mathematical model, we show that coevolution of cooperation and language can provide an avenue through which both cooperation and language evolve. In this model, individuals in a population play a prisoner's dilemma game and at the same time try to communicate a set of representations by producing signals. For this purpose, individuals try to build a common language, which is composed of a set of signal-representation associations. Individuals decide in language learning based on their payoff from the prisoner's dilemma game and decide about their strategy in the prisoner's dilemma game based on their success in conveying symbolic information. The model shows cooperators are able to build a common language and protect it against defectors' attempt to decode it. The language channels the benefit of cooperation toward cooperators, and defectors, being banished from the language, are unable to exploit cooperators, and are doomed to extinction.