This paper presents a game theoretic model of primitive economic exchange, designed to capture strategic human behavior in pre-monetary societies. The model draws on insights from evolutionary theory, anthropology, and psychology to represent fundamental behavioral dimensions such as ethicality, selfishness, and forgiveness. It provides a framework to analyze how cooperation and reciprocity, considered to be core components of economic exchange, may have evolved and stabilized in small populations.
Understanding human behavior in such environments requires a synthesis of both the sciences and the social sciences. While disciplines like history, anthropology, and psychology offer detailed empirical accounts of human behavior, fields such as evolutionary biology and ecology provide insight into the origins of and adaptive logic behind such behaviors. This model integrates these perspectives to investigate how individuals might behave under conditions where reputation management, fairness, and social exchange are necessary for survival.
The game is structured around three core behavioral axes: Ethical vs. Unethical, Selfish vs. Unselfish, and Agreeable vs. Non-Agreeable. Payoff analysis suggests that a strategy profile characterized by ethicality, selfishness, and Non-Agreeableness emerges as evolutionarily stable. This outcome highlights the importance of maintaining a reciprocal balance, meeting one’s own needs, and selectively discriminating against exploiters in environments where repeat interactions are likely. In contrast, unethical or unfair strategies are only advantageous in isolated, one-shot exchanges, consistent with the literature on evolutionary games, human behavioral ecology, and anthropology.
This interdisciplinary approach offers three key contributions:
- It is synthesized from underutilized but complementary theories across multiple disciplines.
- It models human-specific behaviors with a theoretical grounding in established fields.
- It produces results consistent with those of earlier game models, despite a more complex starting foundation.
Overall, the paper tries to demonstrate how evolutionarily consistent strategies for primitive exchange can be better understood through a unified model of decision-making grounded in both the natural and social sciences.
