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Essays on the Evolution of Prosocial Behaviors
Prosocial behaviors β such as helping others, donating, and
cooperating β 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