Sergey Gavrilets and Paul Seabright
PNAS 122 (32) e2504339122
Beliefs about whether the world is a zero-sum or a positive-sum environment vary across individuals and cultures, and affect people’s willingness to work, invest, and cooperate with others. We model interaction between individuals who are biased toward believing the environment is zero-sum, and those biased toward believing it is positive-sum. Beliefs spread through natural and cultural selection if they lead individuals to have higher utilities. If individuals are matched randomly, selection leads to the more accurate beliefs driving out the less accurate. Nonrandom matching and conformity biases can favor the survival of inaccurate beliefs. Cultural authorities can profit from creating enclaves of like-minded individuals whose higher bias drives out the more accurate beliefs of others.
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