| Abstract: |
Happiness, in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, was understood quite
differently from today's popular notions of personal pleasure. Happiness
implies a flourishing life - one of virtue, purpose, and contribution to the
common good. This paper studies populations of individuals - that we call
homo-felix - who maximise an objective function that we call happiness. The
happiness of one individual depends on the payoffs that they receive in games
they play with their peers as well as on the happiness of the peers they
interact with. Individuals care more or less about others depending on whether
that makes them more or less happy. This paper analyses the happiness feedback
loops that result from these interactions in simple settings. We find that
individuals tend to care more about individuals who are happier than what they
would be by being selfish. In simple 2 x 2 game theoretic settings, we show
that homo-felix can converge to a variety of equilibria which includes but
goes beyond Nash equilibria. In an n-persons public good game we show that the
non-cooperative Nash equilibrium is marginally unstable and a single
individual who develops prosocial behaviour is able to drive almost the whole
population to a cooperative state. |