In a Weakly Dominated Strategy Is Strength: Evolution of Optimality in Stag Hunt Augmented with a Punishment Option

2015/12/10 by Peter Vanderschraaf · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Decision Sciences · #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Game Theory and Applications

paper · doi:10.1086/684166

openalex publication_date 2015/12/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/07

Abstract

I explore the evolution of strategies in an Augmented Stag Hunt game that adds a punishing strategy to the ordinary Stag Hunt strategies of cooperating, which aims for optimality, and defecting, which “plays it safe.” Cooperating weakly dominates punishing and defecting is the unique evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). Nevertheless, for a wide class of Augmented Stag Hunts, polymorphic strategies combining punishing and cooperating collectively have greater attracting power for replicator dynamics than that of the ESS. The analysis here lends theoretical support to the altruistic punishment hypothesis in the social sciences.

Citations

• The Bargaining Problem
• Evolutionary stable strategies and game dynamics
• Individual and cultural learning in stag hunt games with multiple actions

Cited by

• Simultaneous game [wikipedia]