The Evolution of Social Structure and Coordination Forms―Appropriate Use of Evolutionary Game Approach and Multi-agent Simulations―

Abstract

We observe in human societies or ecosystems a collective of interacting decision-makers evolve their strategies based on their past experiences, and produce various types of social phenomena. The interactions among evolving/learning agents who interact with each others are often analyzed using (1) the evolutionary game approach or (2) multi-agent simulations with evolving agents (Evolutionary MAS). Although subjects for evolutionary game studies and those for evolutionary MAS studies often overlap, some subjects are best investigated by either of the two. In this paper, we first review the features of both approaches from viewpoint of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and discuss both approaches’ territory: what can be or cannot be well-analyzed by either of the approaches. Furthermore, we survey three researches done by the author and investigate concretely the potential or the possibility of either of the approaches.