An illustration of the essential difference between individual and social learning, and its consequences for computational analyses

Drawing a conclusion from recent insights in evolutionary game theory, we show that a so-called spite effect implies that there is an essential difference between individual and social learning. We illustrate its consequences for the choice of computational tools in economics and social settings in general by analyzing two variants of a Genetic Algorithm. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.