Axelrod’s work on the prisoner’s dilemma is one of the most discussed models of social cooperation.
While many aspects of his computer simulations have been debated, their evolutionary
mechanism has not yet received the same attention. We know people do not differ
only in the way they act, but also in how they change their behavior – some may like safe
routines, others risk with the new. Yet in formal models cultural evolution is taken to be
an homogeneous process, such as the imitation of successful peers. In this paper we challenge
this view and we propose an agent-based model that takes into account heterogeneity
among individuals’ learning strategies. The evolutionary dynamic is an adaptation of the
so-called consumat approach, originally developed by Wander Jager and Marco Janssen in
order to integrate different models of individuals behavior.
