Co-evolution of Personality and the Environment
Wander Jager, Marco A. Janssen
w.jager@bdk.rug.nl, m.janssen@feweb.vu.nl
In this paper we focus on the cognitive costs that are
involved in more reasoned decision-making strategies. We argue that
a lower investment of cognitive effort, e.g., by satisficing or
imitating the behaviour of others, may be beneficial both for the individual
as for the sustainability of the population as a whole. We further
argue that the most effective distribution of decision- strategies will be
related to the stability of the environment people live in. Hence personality
factors that determine the preference for a certain distribution are
subject to evolutionary pressures. Starting from a multi-theoretical
perspective on behaviour we have developed a multi-agent model. In
this model several decision-making strategies have been formalised.
These strategies differ with respect to the cognitive effort they require
and their individual versus social orientation. Experiments with this
multi-agent model show that the type of personality that is most frequent
in a population depends on the stability of the environment. In unstable
environment, agents with higher aspiration levels and lower uncertainty
tolerance have an evolutionary benefit. Moreover, the results show
that sustainability can be reached when agents with particular type
of personalities evolve. The model experiments also demonstrate
that evolutionary pressures favour a mix of cognitive strategies. Finally
we demonstrate that an unstable environment favours the development
of a smaller population investing more cognitive effort in their decision
making process.