Social exclusion and the evolution of cooperation

Social exclusion, and the threat of, represents a strong mechanism for both self-regulation and social regulation. Recent theorizing has proposed a link between social exclusion and the evolution of cooperation, posing that cognitive and emotional adaptations aimed at excluding particular individuals from the group, may function as a mechanism to regulate group and individual’s cooperation. Here we formalize this statement with the aid of computer simulations of evolutionary scenarios featuring groups in social dilemma situations. We show that social exclusion may represent a powerful mechanism to maintain group cooperation in the long term, whereby facilitating the evolution of cooperative and altruistic traits. We also compare the effect of social exclusion on the emergence of cooperation with other well-known mechanisms, such as reciprocity, reputation, and punishment. We show that social exclusion is more powerful and more adaptive than any of these mechanisms