The evolution of taking roles

Individuals engage in an ex-ante symmetric situation, in which in addition to a symmetric equilibrium there are also asymmetric equilibria. Individuals can assume one of a finite set of payoff irrelevant publicly observable labels and can condition their action choice on their own assumed label as well as the label of their opponent. We study evolutionary (and neutrally) stable strategies of such games. While the formal analysis is similar to the analysis of cheap talk games with evolutionary equilibrium selection, we are here mostly interested in the social structure that underlies such equilibria. For the class of 2 × 2 games with asymmetric pure strategy equilibria (hawk-dove games) we find a key distinction between two subclasses. While the best-response structure is identical for both subclasses, the evolution is quite different for hawk-dove games in which if you play dove you would prefer the opponent to play hawk (we call these anti-coordination games), and hawk dove games in which you always prefer the opponent to choose dove (we call them conflict games). Two social structures of particular interest are a hierarchical structure and an egalitarian structure. Furthermore, complex social structures composed of simpler substructures can emerge and we characterize their evolutionary stability. We discuss when they are evolutionary stable and the consequences of different structures for welfare.