An evolutionary model of personality traits related to cooperative behavior using a large language model

Abstract

Abstract This study aims to demonstrate that Large Language Models (LLMs) can empower research on the evolution of human behavior, based on evolutionary game theory, by using an evolutionary model positing that instructing LLMs with high-level psychological and cognitive character descriptions enables the simulation of human behavior choices in game-theoretical scenarios. As a first step towards this objective, this paper proposes an evolutionary model of personality traits related to cooperative behavior using a large language model. In the model, linguistic descriptions of personality traits related to cooperative behavior are used as genes. The deterministic strategies extracted from LLM that make behavioral decisions based on these personality traits are used as behavioral traits. The population is evolved according to selection based on average payoff and mutation of genes by asking LLM to slightly modify the parent gene toward cooperative or selfish. Through experiments and analyses, we clarify that such a model can indeed exhibit evolution of cooperative behavior based on the diverse and higher-order representation of personality traits. We also observed repeated intrusion of cooperative and selfish personality traits through changes in the expression of personality traits. The words that emerged in the evolved genes reflected the behavioral tendencies of their associated personalities in terms of semantics, thereby influencing individual behavior and, consequently, the evolutionary dynamics.

Keywords

• Cooperation
• Evolution
• Prisoner’s dilemma
• Large language model
• Personality trait
• Artificial life