Human ecological success relies on our characteristic ability to flexibly self-organize into cooperative social groups, the most successful of which employ substantial specialization and division of labor. Unlike most other animals, humans learn by trial and error during their lives what role to take on. However, when some critical roles are more attractive than others, and individuals are self-interested, then there is a social dilemma: each individual would prefer others take on the critical but unremunerative roles so they may remain free to take one that pays better. But disaster occurs if all act thusly and a critical role goes unfilled. In such situations learning an optimum role distribution may not be possible. Consequently, a fundamental question is: how can division of labor emerge in groups of self-interested lifetime-learning individuals? Here we show that by introducing a model of social norms, which we regard as emergent patterns of decentralized social sanctioning, it becomes possible for groups of self-interested individuals to learn a productive division of labor involving all critical roles. Such social norms work by redistributing rewards within the population to disincentivize antisocial roles while incentivizing prosocial roles that do not intrinsically pay as well as others.

翻译：人类生态的成功依赖于我们特有的、灵活自组织成合作性社会群体的能力，其中最为成功的群体采用了显著的专业化和劳动分工。与大多数其他动物不同，人类在生命过程中通过试错学习应当承担何种角色。然而，当某些关键角色比其他角色更具吸引力，且个体是自利的时，就会产生一种社会困境：每个个体都希望他人承担关键但回报微薄的角色，以便自己可以自由选择报酬更高的角色。但如果所有人都如此行事，关键角色无人承担，就会导致灾难。在这种情况下，学习最优的角色分配可能无法实现。因此，一个根本性问题是：在由自利的终生学习个体组成的群体中，劳动分工如何能够涌现？在此我们证明，通过引入一种社会规范模型——我们将其视为去中心化社会制裁的涌现模式——自利个体群体能够学会一种涉及所有关键角色的高效劳动分工。这种社会规范通过重新分配群体内的回报来发挥作用：抑制反社会角色，同时激励那些内在报酬不及其他角色的亲社会角色。