Evolution of objectives can enable prosocial behaviour without social awareness

Division of labour is fundamental to the functioning of societies and socially living organisms. While it has been central to their study for decades, no complete picture has emerged yet. Some of the most fascinating questions arise in the context of self-organised societies, such as those of social insects, which coordinate their behaviour with completely decentralised simple decision-making performed by individuals that only have local information at their disposal. Based on empirical evidence, these collectives appear to balance task engagement globally across their whole task network for the benefit of the colony overall. How can this pro-social coordination be achieved by independently acting individuals? How is a global workforce balancing possible based on only local perception with no knowledge of the global colony status or needs? How can information flow through the task network, so that a changed task demand in one part of the network can lead to adjustments in distant other parts? We detail a model that presents a potential answer to this conundrum. Our model is informed by evolutionary game theory and rests on the assumption that the perception of an individual’s sensory input can evolve. We present a conceptual argument and simulation studies to show that pro-social behaviour will evolve in a collective of agents that adjust their behaviour using primitive reinforcement mechanisms if we assume an evolving perception function