Evolutionary Game Theory

Evolutionary game theory began as an application of game theory to biology and has since drawn increasing interest from economists, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers. The article says social scientists are drawn to it for three reasons: its "evolution" can mean cultural change in beliefs and norms, its rationality assumptions suit social systems better than traditional game theory does, and it is an explicitly dynamic theory. Ronald Fisher first developed its core ideas to explain equal sex ratios in mammals, and Maynard Smith and Price's 1973 work popularized the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). The article notes that Nash equilibria can fail to capture evolutionary stability, illustrated by the Hawk-Dove game, whose mixed equilibrium plays Hawk with probability V/C.