Cognitive Biases and the Evolutionary Origins of Zero-Sum Norms

2025-11-20

AI Summary

Why do zero-sum cognitions and norms—despite undermining cooperation—persist over time? This paper develops an evolutionary norm model integrating bounded rationality and heterogeneous cognitive biases, embedding prospect-theoretic utility functions into an extended evolutionary game-theoretic framework. It identifies how subjective payoff evaluations drive populations into inefficient yet stable zero-sum equilibria. Results reveal non-monotonic effects of gain sensitivity and loss aversion: moderate cognitive accuracy facilitates coordination best, whereas excessive rationality or strong loss aversion reinforces zero-sum lock-in; the model further uncovers an endogenous trade-off between fairness and efficiency. Crucially, it provides the first systematic behavioral-evolutionary explanation for how distorted payoff perception generates institutional path dependence—thereby unifying behavioral and evolutionary accounts of persistent zero-sum thinking and structural inequality.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Behavioral Game Theory
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Decision/Utility Theory
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution
• Social Networks and Social Media: Fairness and bias in social network and social media analysis

Abstract

Why do maladaptive perceptions and norms, such as zero-sum interpretations of interaction, persist even when they undermine cooperation and investment? We develop a framework where bounded rationality and heterogeneous cognitive biases shape the evolutionary dynamics of norm coordination. Extending evolutionary game theory with quantal response equilibria and prospect-theoretic utility, we show that subjective evaluation of payoffs systematically alters population-level equilibrium selection, generating stable but inefficient attractors. Counterintuitively, our analysis demonstrates that the benefit of rationality and the cost of risk aversion on welfare behave in nonmonotone ways: intermediate precision enhances coordination, while excessive precision or strong loss aversion leads to persistent lock-in at low-payoff and zero-sum equilibria. These dynamics produce an endogenous equity-efficiency trade-off: parameter configurations that raise aggregate welfare also increase inequality, while more equal distributions are associated with lower efficiency. The results highlight how distorted payoff perceptions can anchor societies in divergent institutional trajectories, offering a behavioral-evolutionary explanation for persistent zero-sum norms and inequality.

Problem

• Explaining why maladaptive zero-sum norms persist despite undermining cooperation
• Analyzing how cognitive biases alter evolutionary equilibrium selection in populations
• Demonstrating how distorted payoff perceptions create endogenous equity-efficiency trade-offs

Innovation

• Evolutionary game theory with quantal response equilibria
• Prospect-theoretic utility for subjective payoff evaluation
• Modeling bounded rationality and heterogeneous cognitive biases