Cooperative Behaviour in LLMs via Cultural Evolution of Norms and Strategies

Chen Cecilia Liu

Keywords: Cultural Evolution, Cultural Norms

Abstract: This work explores the emergence of cooperative behaviour in large language models (LLMs) through cultural evolution that incorporates both game strategies and high-level cultural values. Building on prior studies that showed limited success in inducing cooperation through strategy evolution alone, we experiment with a dual-evolutionary setup involving the transmission and mutation of both game strategies and cultural norms across generations. Through two case studies involving the Donor and Stag Hunt games, we demonstrate that evolving cultural norms within the system prompts can enhance cooperative behaviour in Gemini-2.0-Flash and LLama3.1-3B models. Our preliminary findings highlight the importance of incorporating cultural norms into system prompts and reveal the potential of emerging agent behaviours to promote desirable social interactions.

Submission Number: 8