Good standing and cooperation

Indirect reciprocity is generally considered one of the leading mechanisms to explain how cooperation may emerge by natural selection. The basic intuition is that establishing a reputation of being a helpful individual increases the probability of being in turn helped. Two models have been proposed to describe how indirect reciprocity may work: the standing model (Sugden 1986/2004 in The economics of rights, cooperation and welfare. Blackwell, Oxford.) and the imagescoring model (Nowak and Sigmund 1998a in Nature 393:573–577, b in J Theoretical Biol 194:561–574). Although there is evidence that the former model would perform better under a wide set of circumstances, it is often maintained that it requires individuals with an implausibly large capacity of processing recursive information. In this paper, I argue that this is not actually the case. I further emphasize that even if the hypothesis of indirect reciprocity is unable to give a fair account of the ecological bases of cooperation, it has inspired a deal of research precious to social sciences.