Groupwise information sharing promotes ingroup favoritism in indirect reciprocity

Mitsuhiro Nakamura, Naoki Masuda

Indirect reciprocity is a mechanism for cooperation in social dilemma situations. In indirect reciprocity, an individual is motivated to help another to acquire a good reputation and receive help from others afterwards. Another aspect of human cooperation is ingroup favoritism, whereby individuals help members in their own group more often than those in other groups. Ingroup favoritism is a puzzle for the theory of cooperation because it is not easily evolutionarily stable. In the context of indirect reciprocity, ingroup favoritism has been shown to be a consequence of employing a double standard when assigning reputations to ingroup and outgroup members. An example of such a double standard is the situation in which helping an ingroup member is regarded as good, whereas the same action toward an outgroup member is regarded as bad.