Evolution of cooperation with similarity to an archetype

•We introduce the idea of discrimination based on the distance to an archetype.•For all the archetypes we studied, cooperation emerges.•The population does not necessarily evolve towards the archetype.•Cooperation may emerge faster and more extremely than in the similarity-based case.

We use the framework of Colman with a Prisoner's Dilemma game and an evolutionary agent-based algorithm in order to study the evolution of cooperation and discrimination. We assume that players can discriminate on the basis of the phenotypic distance to an archetype, linked itself with a given behaviour in the game. However, we do not impose that the archetype corresponds to a conditionally cooperative behaviour. We show that cooperation can become the norm and discrimination can evolve spontaneously with no other assumption. For some archetypes, cooperation can even evolve faster and with more intensity than in the similarity-based case studied in Colman et al., 2012.