Fascinating, thanks. I already knew a lot of this in a vague manner, but it was nice to see it made concrete and clear.
This seems to have obvious evpsych implications regarding emotions such as love and friendship—if you love somebody enough that you can’t take serious actions against them, even if it would otherwise be rational (for a purely selfish agent), then it’s also more profitable for your partner to keep interacting with you. Of course, handicapping yourself is only a good idea if the other person isn’t out to ruthlessly exploit you anyway, so love often demands a lot of reciprocity—unless, perhaps (getting into strong armchair evpsych territory here), the status difference is so large that you have potentially more to gain than lose anyway. I expect somebody here can give a pointer to the standard papers about this?
Fascinating, thanks. I already knew a lot of this in a vague manner, but it was nice to see it made concrete and clear.
This seems to have obvious evpsych implications regarding emotions such as love and friendship—if you love somebody enough that you can’t take serious actions against them, even if it would otherwise be rational (for a purely selfish agent), then it’s also more profitable for your partner to keep interacting with you. Of course, handicapping yourself is only a good idea if the other person isn’t out to ruthlessly exploit you anyway, so love often demands a lot of reciprocity—unless, perhaps (getting into strong armchair evpsych territory here), the status difference is so large that you have potentially more to gain than lose anyway. I expect somebody here can give a pointer to the standard papers about this?