An Evolutionary Benefit from Misperception in Foraging Behaviour

摘要

Misperception is a common cause of error for individuals and organisations. Conventional wisdom suggests that its effects are detrimental to the misperceiver or its society as a whole. However, in some circumstances misperception can provide a benefit either by diversifying the behaviour of a population or by discouraging behaviour that has a negative impact on the population. In such cases adaptive pressures will drive the population to evolve a probability of misperception that is optimal for that environment. We explore this hypothesis using an evolutionary artificial life simulation.