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RESEARCH ARTICLE   Open Access    

Honesty and deception in populations of selfish, adaptive individuals

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  • Abstract: Biologists have mostly studied under what circumstances honest signaling is stable. Stability, however, is not sufficient to explain the emergence of honest signaling. We study the evolution of honest signaling between selfish, adaptive individuals and observe that honest signaling can emerge through learning. More importantly, honest signaling may emerge in cases where it is not evolutionary stable. In such cases, honesty and dishonesty co-exist. Furthermore, honest signaling does not necessarily emerge in cases where it is evolutionary stable. We show that the latter is due to the existence of other, more important equilibria and that the importance of equilibria is related to Pareto-optimality.
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  • Cite this article

    David Catteeuw, Bernard Manderick. 2016. Honesty and deception in populations of selfish, adaptive individuals. The Knowledge Engineering Review 31(1)19−30, doi: 10.1017/S0269888915000168
    David Catteeuw, Bernard Manderick. 2016. Honesty and deception in populations of selfish, adaptive individuals. The Knowledge Engineering Review 31(1)19−30, doi: 10.1017/S0269888915000168

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RESEARCH ARTICLE   Open Access    

Honesty and deception in populations of selfish, adaptive individuals

The Knowledge Engineering Review  31 2016, 31(1): 19−30  |  Cite this article

Abstract: Abstract: Biologists have mostly studied under what circumstances honest signaling is stable. Stability, however, is not sufficient to explain the emergence of honest signaling. We study the evolution of honest signaling between selfish, adaptive individuals and observe that honest signaling can emerge through learning. More importantly, honest signaling may emerge in cases where it is not evolutionary stable. In such cases, honesty and dishonesty co-exist. Furthermore, honest signaling does not necessarily emerge in cases where it is evolutionary stable. We show that the latter is due to the existence of other, more important equilibria and that the importance of equilibria is related to Pareto-optimality.

    • The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and critique. David also thanks Tom Lenaerts, The Anh Han, and Joachim De Beule for their feedback.

    • © Cambridge University Press, 2016 2016Cambridge University Press
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    Cite this article
    David Catteeuw, Bernard Manderick. 2016. Honesty and deception in populations of selfish, adaptive individuals. The Knowledge Engineering Review 31(1)19−30, doi: 10.1017/S0269888915000168
    David Catteeuw, Bernard Manderick. 2016. Honesty and deception in populations of selfish, adaptive individuals. The Knowledge Engineering Review 31(1)19−30, doi: 10.1017/S0269888915000168
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