Evolution of indirect reciprocity under emotion expression

Abstract

Do emotion expressions impact the evolution of cooperation? Indirect Reciprocity offers a solution to the cooperation dilemma with prior work focusing on the role of social norms in propagating others’ reputations and contributing to evolutionarily stable cooperation. Recent experimental studies, however, show that emotion expressions shape pro-social behaviour, communicate one’s intentions to others, and serve an error-correcting function; yet, the role of emotion signals in the evolution of cooperation remains unexplored. We present the first model of IR based on evolutionary game theory that exposes how emotion expressions positively influence the evolution of cooperation, particularly in scenarios of frequent errors. Our findings provide evolutionary support for the existence of emotion-based social norms, which help foster cooperation among unrelated individuals.