Essays on the Evolution of Prosocial Behaviors

Prosocial behaviors – such as helping others, donating, and cooperating – are often considered key to evolutionary suc- cess. Therefore, it is of great interest to understand under what conditions these behaviors can emerge and/or can be sustained at a population level. Following a dual process approach, I study whether and how cognition can affect the evolution of collaboration, cooperation, and generosity. I do this by employing stochastic stability analysis techniques and agent-based simulations. For each prosocial behavior consid- ered, I find that cognition can play an important role in the diffusion of prosocial behaviors, sometimes fostering them and other times hampering them. These results shed light on recent experimental evidence and, at the same time, suggest new interesting research avenues.