| Abstract | Cotemporary behavioral economics make it convinced that human being has fairness preference, but do not reveal why it exists. This paper develops an evolutionary explanation to it that fairness preference of human being origins from the process of earlier human being evolution. Based on an evolutionary game model and a stochastic evolution simulation model, this paper shows that, a) in a closed group, singular state society with fairness preference is stochastic evolutionary stable equilibrium, while dual-state society with non-fairness preference is also evolutionary stable but not stochastic stable; b) if the competitions among groups are considered, the only evolutionary stable equilibrium is the singular state society with fairness preference. The reasons are as follows, there is a tradeoff between cooperation opportunity for and the cooperation benefit, and fair behavior can balance the effects of cooperation opportunity and cooperation benefit on survival competition, and then becomes the behavioral paradigm with optimal fitness in survival competition at both individual and group level. This notion is helpful to find a theoretical logic to support the fairness preference hypothesis in behavioral economics, as well as to rethink the human irrational behaviors from a new perspective, and explore the bounds of rationality. The theoretical logic in this paper is yet to be documented by more determinative evidences from paleanthropology, evolutionary psychology and biology. |