The emergence of division of labor through decentralized social sanctioning

Human ecological success relies on our characteristic ability to flexibly
self-organize into cooperative social groups, the most successful of which
employ substantial specialization and division of labor. Unlike most other
animals, humans learn by trial and error during their lives what role to
take on. However, when some critical roles are more attractive than
others, and individuals are self-interested, then there is a social
dilemma: each individual would prefer others take on the critical but
unremunerative roles so they may remain free to take one that pays better.
But disaster occurs if all act thusly and a critical role goes unfilled.
In such situations learning an optimum role distribution may not be
possible. Consequently, a fundamental question is: how can division of
labor emerge in groups of self-interested lifetime-learning individuals?
Here we show that by introducing a model of social norms, which we regard
as emergent patterns of decentralized social sanctioning, it becomes
possible for groups of self-interested individuals to learn a productive
division of labor involving all critical roles. Such social norms work by
redistributing rewards within the population to disincentivize antisocial
roles while incentivizing prosocial roles that do not intrinsically pay as
well as others.