We investigate two paradigms for studying the evolution of cooperation--Prisoner's Dilemma and Snowdrift game in an online friendship network obtained from a social networking site. We demonstrate that such social network has small-world property and degree distribution has a power-law tail. Besides, it has hierarchical organizations and exhibits disassortative mixing pattern. We study the evolutionary version of the two types of games on it. It is found that enhancement and sustainment of cooperative behaviors are attributable to the underlying network topological organization. It is also shown that cooperators can survive when confronted with the invasion of defectors throughout the entire ranges of parameters of both games. The evolution of cooperation on empirical networks is influenced by various network effects in a combined manner, compared with that on model networks. Our results can help understand the cooperative behaviors in human groups and society.
We study an evolutionary spatial prisoner's dilemma game where the fitness of the players is determined by both the payoffs from the current interaction and their history. We consider the situation where the selection timescale is slower than the interaction timescale. This is done by implementing probabilistic reproduction on an individual level. We observe that both too fast and too slow reproduction rates hamper the emergence of cooperation. In other words, there exists an intermediate selection timescale that maximizes cooperation. Another factor we find to promote cooperation is a diversi…
Dynamics of evolutionary games strongly depend on underlying networks. We study the coevolutionary prisoner's dilemma in which players change their local networks as well as strategies (i.e., cooperate or defect). This topic has been increasingly explored by many researchers. On the basis of active linking dynamics [J. M. Pacheco et al., J. Theor. Biol. 243, 437 (2006), J. M. Pacheco et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 258103 (2006)], we show that cooperation is enhanced fairly robustly. In particular, cooperation evolves when the payoff of the player is normalized by the number of neighbors; this is…
Previous studies suggest that punishment is a useful way to promote cooperation in the well-mixed public goods game, whereas it still lacks specific evidence that punishment maintains cooperation in spatial prisoner's dilemma game as well. To address this issue, we introduce a mechanism of recorded punishment, involved with memory and punishment, into spatial prisoner's dilemma game. We find that increasing punishment rate or memory length promotes the evolution of cooperation monotonously. Interestingly, compared with traditional version, recorded punishment will facilitate cooperation better…
In this paper we extend the investigation of cooperation in some classical evolutionary games on populations were the network of interactions among individuals is of the scale-free type. We show that the update rule, the payoff computation and, to some extent the timing of the operations, have a marked influence on the transient dynamics and on the amount of cooperation that can be established at equilibrium. We also study the dynamical behavior of the populations and their evolutionary stability.
We study a spatial Prisoner's dilemma game with two types (A and B) of players located on a square lattice. Players following either cooperator or defector strategies play Prisoner's Dilemma games with their 24 nearest neighbors. The players are allowed to adopt one of their neighbor's strategy with a probability dependent on the payoff difference and type of the given neighbor. Players A and B have different efficiency in the transfer of their own strategy therefore the strategy adoption probability is reduced by a multiplicative factor (w < 1) from the players of type B. We report that the m…
Game theory is fundamental to understanding cooperation between agents. Mainly, the Prisoner's Dilemma is a well-known model that has been extensively studied in complex networks. However, although the emergence of cooperation has been investigated before, the influence of memory in its evolution is not well understood. This paper presents a detailed study of cooperation dynamics in which agents have memory. We simulate the evolutionary Prisoner's dilemma game on random, scale-free and networks presenting degree-degree correlation. Through extensive simulations, we show that assortativity can …
We study the evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma game on scale-free networks for different initial distributions. We consider three types of initial distributions for cooperators and defectors: initially random distribution with different frequencies of defectors; intentional organization with defectors initially occupying the most connected nodes with different fractions of defectors; intentional assignment for cooperators occupying the most connected nodes with different proportions of defectors at the beginning. It is shown that initial configurations for cooperators and defectors can influence…
Game theory formalizes certain interactions between physical particles or between living beings in biology, sociology, and economics, and quantifies the outcomes by payoffs. The prisoner's dilemma (PD) describes situations in which it is profitable if everybody cooperates rather than defects (free-rides or cheats), but as cooperation is risky and defection is tempting, the expected outcome is defection. Nevertheless, some biological and social mechanisms can support cooperation by effectively transforming the payoffs. Here, we study the related phase transitions, which can be of first order (d…
We show that the success of cooperation in an evolutionary prisoner's dilemma on a complex network can be predicted by a simple, quantitative network analysis using mean field parameters. The criterion is shown to be accurate on a wide variety of networks with degree distributions ranging from regular to Poisson to scale-free. The network analysis uses a parameter that allows for comparisons of networks with both similar, and distinct, topologies. Furthermore, we establish the criterion here as a natural network analogue of Hamilton's classical rule for kin selection, despite arising in an ent…
We study an evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game with two layered graphs, where the lower layer is the physical infrastructure on which the interactions are taking place and the upper layer represents the connections for the strategy adoption (learning) mechanism. This system is investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations and an extended pair-approximation method. We consider the average density of cooperators in the stationary state for a fixed interaction graph, while varying the number of edges in the learning graph. According to the Monte Carlo simulations, the cooperation is modified…
In this paper we study the cooperative behavior of agents playing the Prisoner's Dilemma game in random scale-free networks. We show that the survival of cooperation is enhanced with respect to random homogeneous graphs but, on the other hand, decreases when compared to that found in Barabási-Albert scale-free networks. We show that the latter decrease is related with the structure of cooperation. Additionally, we present a mean field approximation for studying evolutionary dynamics in networks with no degree-degree correlations and with arbitrary degree distribution. The mean field approach i…
Although cooperation is central to the organisation of many social systems, relatively little is known about cooperation in situations of collective emergency. When groups of people flee from a danger such as a burning building or a terrorist attack, the collective benefit of cooperation is important, but the cost of helping is high and the temptation to defect is strong. To explore the degree of cooperation in emergencies, we develop a new social game, the help-or-escape social dilemma. Under time and monetary pressure, players decide how much risk they are willing to take in order to help ot…
The paradox of cooperation among selfish individuals still puzzles scientific communities. Although a large amount of evidence has demonstrated that cooperator clusters in spatial games are effective to protect cooperators against the invasion of defectors, we continue to lack the condition for the formation of a giant cooperator cluster that assures the prevalence of cooperation in a system. Here, we study the dynamical organization of cooperator clusters in spatial prisoner's dilemma game to offer the condition for the dominance of cooperation, finding that a phase transition characterized b…
Situations of conflict giving rise to social dilemmas are widespread in society and game theory is one major way in which they can be investigated. Starting from the observation that individuals in society interact through networks of acquaintances, we model the co-evolution of the agents' strategies and of the social network itself using two prototypical games, the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Stag Hunt. Allowing agents to dismiss ties and establish new ones, we find that cooperation and coordination can be achieved through the self-organization of the social network, a result that is non-trivi…
The conventional wisdom is that scale-free networks are prone to cooperation spreading. In this paper we investigate the cooperative behaviors on the structured scale-free network. On the contrary of the conventional wisdom that scale-free networks are prone to cooperation spreading, the evolution of cooperation is inhibited on the structured scale-free network while performing the prisoner's dilemma (PD) game. Firstly, we demonstrate that neither the scale-free property nor the high clustering coefficient is responsible for the inhibition of cooperation spreading on the structured scale-free …
In this paper, the total payoff of each agent is regulated to reduce the heterogeneity of the distribution of the total payoffs. It is found there is an optimal regulation strength where the fraction of cooperation is prominently promoted, too weak or too strong of the strength will have little effects or result in the disappearance of the cooperators. It is also found that most of the cooperators are not distributed in isolation but form the cooperator clusters, and to promote the cooperation the only way is to enlarge the size of the cooperator clusters. Finally, we try to explain the emerge…
Evolutionary Dynamics of Reputation-Based Voluntary Prisoner's Dilemma Games
Kyushu University（九州大学）；Teesside University（蒂斯赛德大学）；CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute（中国船舶系统工程研究院）；CSSC Intelligent Innovation Research Institute（中国船舶智能创新研究院）；Yunnan University of Finance and Economics（云南财经大学）；University of Maribor（马里博尔大学）；Community Healthcare Center Dr. Adolf Drolc Maribor（马里博尔阿道夫·德罗尔克博士社区健康中心）；Kyung Hee University（庆熙大学）；Korea University（高丽大学）；Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学）
Monitoring and reporting incorrect acts are pervasive for maintaining human cooperation, but in theory it is unclear how they influence each other. To explore their possible interactions we consider spatially structured population where individuals face the collective-risk social dilemma. In our minimal model cooperator players report defection according to the loss of their interests. In parallel we assume a monitoring institution that monitors all group member and identifies wrong behavior with a certain probability. In response to these feedbacks a sanctioning institution develops punishmen…
In real world, individual rationality varies for the sake of the diversity of people's individuality. In order to investigate how diversity of agent's rationality affects the evolution of cooperation, we introduce the individual rationality proportional to the $β$th power of the each agent's degree. Simulation results on heterogeneous scale-free network show that the dynamic process is greatly affected by the diversity of rationality. Both promotion and inhibition of cooperative behavior can be observed at different region of parameter $β$. We present explanation to these results by quantitati…
We simulate the prisoner's dilemma and hawk-dove games on a real social acquaintance network. Using a discrete analogue of replicator dynamics, we show that surprisingly high levels of cooperation can be achieved, contrary to what happens in unstructured mixing populations. Moreover, we empirically show that cooperation in this network is stable with respect to invasion by defectors.
The interplay of social and strategic motivations in human interactions is a largely unexplored question in collective social phenomena. Whether individuals' decisions are taken in a pure strategic basis or due to social pressure without a rational background crucially influences the model outcome. Here we study a networked Prisoner's Dilemma in which decisions are made either based on the replication of the most successful neighbor's strategy (unconditional imitation) or by pure social imitation following an update rule inspired by the voter model. The main effects of the voter dynamics are a…
Understanding the role of network structure in the evolution of cooperation is a key research goal at the intersection between physics and biology. Recent studies have particularly focused on multiplex networks given that multiple social domains are interrelated and cannot be represented by single-layer networks. However, the role of network multiplexity is not fully understood when combined with another important network characteristic: network dynamics. In the present study, we investigated evolutionary prisoner's dilemma games played on dynamic two-layer multiplex networks in which the payo…
We introduce a community network model which exhibits scale-free property and study the evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma game (PDG) on this network model. It is found that the frequency of cooperators decreases with the increment of the average degree $\bar{k}$ from the simulation results. And reducing inter-community links can promote cooperation when we keep the total links (including inner-community and inter-community links) unchanged. It is also shown that the heterogeneity of networks does not always enhance cooperation and the pattern of links among all the vertices under a given degree-…
Understanding the origins of volunteerism and free-riding is crucial in collective action situations where a sufficient number of cooperators is necessary to achieve shared benefits, such as in vaccination campaigns and social change movements. Despite the importance of attaining behavior consistency for successful collective action, the theoretical mechanisms behind this process remain largely elusive. Here, we address this issue by studying the evolutionary dynamics of individual cooperativity levels in multi-round threshold public goods games. By using adaptive dynamics, we explore how indi…
We investigate an evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game among self-driven agents, where collective motion of biological flocks is imitated through averaging directions of neighbors. Depending on the temptation to defect and the velocity at which agents move, we find that cooperation can not only be maintained in such a system but there exists an optimal size of interaction neighborhood, which can induce the maximum cooperation level. When compared with the case that all agents do not move, cooperation can even be enhanced by the mobility of individuals, provided that the velocity and the size o…
We propose an extension of the evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma cellular automata, introduced by Nowak and May \cite{nm92}, in which the pressure of the environment is taken into account. This is implemented by requiring that individuals need to collect a minimum score $U_{min}$, representing indispensable resources (nutrients, energy, money, etc.) to prosper in this environment. So the agents, instead of evolving just by adopting the behaviour of the most successful neighbour (who got $U^{msn}$), also take into account if $U^{msn}$ is above or below the threshold $U_{min}$. If $U^{msn}<U_{min}…
Evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game is studied where initially all players are linked via a regular graph, having four neighbors each. Simultaneously with the strategy evolution, players are allowed to make new connections and thus permanently extend their neighborhoods, provided they have been successful in passing their strategy to the opponents. We show that this simple coevolutionary rule shifts the survival barrier of cooperators towards high temptations to defect and results in highly heterogeneous interaction networks with an exponential fit best characterizing their…
The world in which we are living is a huge network of networks and should be described by interdependent networks. The interdependence between networks significantly affects the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation on them. Meanwhile, due to the diversity and complexity of social and biological systems, players on different networks may not interact with each other by the same way, which should be described by multiple models in evolutionary game theory, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and Snowdrift Game. We therefore study the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation on two interdependent networks…
Varying environmental conditions affect relations between interacting individuals in social dilemmas, thus affecting also the evolution of cooperation. Oftentimes these environmental variations are seasonal and can therefore be mathematically described as periodic changes. Accordingly, we here study how periodic shifts between different manifestations of social dilemmas affect cooperation. We observe a non-trivial interplay between the inherent spatiotemporal dynamics that characterizes the spreading of cooperation in a particular social dilemma type and the frequency of payoff changes. In par…
Spatial games are crucial for understanding patterns of cooperation in nature (and to some extent society). They are known to be more sensitive to local symmetries than e.g. spin models. This paper concerns the evolution of the prisoner's dilemma game on regular lattices with three different types of neighborhoods -- the von Neumann-, Moore-, and kagome types. We investigate two kinds of dynamics for the players to update their strategies (that can be unconditional cooperator or defector). Depending on the payoff difference, an individual can adopt the strategy of a random neighbor (a voter-mo…
We investigate the evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game in structured populations by introducing dimers, which are defined as that two players in each dimer always hold a same strategy. We find that influences of dimers on cooperation depend on the type of dimers and the population structure. For those dimers in which players interact with each other, the cooperation level increases with the number of dimers though the cooperation improvement level depends on the type of network structures. On the other hand, the dimers, in which there are not mutual interactions, will not do any good to the c…
Spatial reciprocity is a well known tour de force of cooperation promotion. A thorough understanding of the effects of different population densities is therefore crucial. Here we study the evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas on different interaction graphs with a certain fraction of vacant nodes. We find that sparsity may favor the resolution of social dilemmas, especially if the population density is close to the percolation threshold of the underlying graph. Regardless of the type of the governing social dilemma as well as particularities of the interaction graph, we show that under…
Recent studies on the evolutionary dynamics of the Prisoner's Dilemma game in scale-free networks have demonstrated that the heterogeneity of the network interconnections enhances the evolutionary success of cooperation. In this paper we address the issue of how the characterization of the asymptotic states of the evolutionary dynamics depends on the initial concentration of cooperators. We find that the measure and the connectedness properties of the set of nodes where cooperation reaches fixation is largely independent of initial conditions, in contrast with the behavior of both the set of n…
We study the evolution of cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game where players are allowed to establish new interactions with others. By employing a simple coevolutionary rule entailing only two crucial parameters, we find that different selection criteria for the new interaction partners as well as their number vitally affect the outcome of the game. The resolution of the social dilemma is most probable if the selection favors more successful players and if their maximally attainable number is restricted. While the preferential selection of the best players promotes cooperation ir…
The effects of networking on the extent of cooperation emerging in a competitive setting are studied. The evolutionary snowdrift game, which represents a realistic alternative to the well-known Prisoner's Dilemma, is studied in the Watts-Strogatz network that spans the regular, small-world, and random networks through random re-wiring. Over a wide range of payoffs, a re-wired network is found to suppress cooperation when compared with a well-mixed or fully connected system. Two extinction payoffs, that characterize the emergence of a homogeneous steady state, are identified. It is found that, …
We study the evolution of cooperation in structured populations within popular models of social dilemmas, whereby simple coevolutionary rules are introduced that may enhance players abilities to enforce their strategy on the opponent. Coevolution thus here refers to an evolutionary process affecting the teaching activity of players that accompanies the evolution of their strategies. Particularly, we increase the teaching activity of a player after it has successfully reproduced, yet we do so depending on the disseminated strategy. We separately consider coevolution affecting either only the co…
We introduce nonlinear attractive effects into a spatial Prisoner's Dilemma game where the players located on a square lattice can either cooperate with their nearest neighbors or defect. In every generation, each player updates its strategy by firstly choosing one of the neighbors with a probability proportional to $\mathcal{A}^α$ denoting the attractiveness of the neighbor, where $\mathcal{A}$ is the payoff collected by it and $α$ ($\geq$0) is a free parameter characterizing the extent of the nonlinear effect; and then adopting its strategy with a probability dependent on their payoff differ…
Exploiting others is beneficial individually but it could also be detrimental globally. The reverse is also true: a higher cooperation level may change the environment in a way that is beneficial for all competitors. To explore the possible consequence of this feedback we consider a coevolutionary model where the local cooperation level determines the payoff values of the applied prisoner's dilemma game. We observe that the coevolutionary rule provides a significantly higher cooperation level comparing to the traditional setup independently of the topology of the applied interaction graph. Int…
In the framework of the paradigmatic prisoner's dilemma, we investigate the evolutionary dynamics of social dilemmas in the presence of "cooperation facilitators". In our model, cooperators and defectors interact as in the classical prisoner's dilemma game, where selection favors defection. However, here the presence of a small number of cooperation facilitators enhances the fitness (reproductive potential) of cooperators, while it does not alter that of defectors. In a finite population of size N, the dynamics of the prisoner's dilemma with facilitators is characterized by the probability tha…
Cooperation for public goods poses a dilemma, where individuals are tempted to free ride on others' contributions. Classic solutions involve monitoring, reputation maintenance and costly incentives, but there are important collective actions based on simple and cheap cues only, for example unplanned protests and revolts. This can be explained by an Ising model with the assumption that individuals in uncertain situations tend to conform to the local majority in their network. Among initial defectors, noise such as rumors or opponents' provocations causes some of them to cooperate accidentally. …
Research has shown that the addition of abstention as an option transforms social dilemmas to rock-paper-scissor type games, where defectors dominate cooperators, cooperators dominate abstainers (loners), and abstainers (loners), in turn, dominate defectors. In this way, abstention can sustain cooperation even under adverse conditions, although defection also persists due to cyclic dominance. However, to abstain or to act as a loner has, to date, always been considered as an independent, third strategy to complement traditional cooperation and defection. Here we consider probabilistic abstenti…
We study the evolution of cooperation in spatial Prisoner's dilemma games with and without extortion by adopting aspiration-driven strategy updating rule. We focus explicitly on how the strategy updating manner (whether synchronous or asynchronous) and also the introduction of extortion strategy affect the collective outcome of the games. By means of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations as well as dynamical cluster techniques, we find that the involvement of extortioners facilitates the boom of cooperators in the population (and whom can always dominate the population if the temptation to defect is no…
Is it rational for selfish individuals to cooperate? The conventional answer based on analysis of games such as the Prisoners Dilemma (PD) is that it is not, even though mutual cooperation results in a better outcome for all. This incompatibility between individual rationality and collective benefit lies at the heart of questions about the evolution of cooperation, as illustrated by PD and similar games. Here, we argue that this apparent incompatibility is due to an inconsistency in the standard Nash framework for analyzing non-cooperative games and propose a new paradigm, that of the co-actio…
Aging is always present, tailoring our interactions with others and postulating a finite lifespan during which we are able to exercise them. We consider the prisoner's dilemma game on a square lattice, and examine how quenched age distributions and different aging protocols influence the evolution of cooperation when taking the life experience and knowledge accumulation into account as time passes. In agreement with previous studies, we find that a quenched assignment of age to players, introducing heterogeneity to the game, substantially promotes cooperative behavior. Introduction of aging an…
We study the evolution of cooperation in the evolutionary spatial prisoner's dilemma game (PDG) and snowdrift game (SG), within which a fraction $α$ of the payoffs of each player gained from direct game interactions is shared equally by the immediate neighbors. The magnitude of the parameter $α$ therefore characterizes the degree of the relatedness among the neighboring players. By means of extensive Monte Carlo simulations as well as an extended mean-field approximation method, we trace the frequency of cooperation in the stationary state. We find that plugging into relatedness can significan…
In many social dilemmas, individuals tend to generate a situation with low payoffs instead of a system optimum ("tragedy of the commons"). Is the routing of traffic a similar problem? In order to address this question, we present experimental results on humans playing a route choice game in a computer laboratory, which allow one to study decision behavior in repeated games beyond the Prisoner's Dilemma. We will focus on whether individuals manage to find a cooperative and fair solution compatible with the system-optimal road usage. We find that individuals tend towards a user equilibrium with …
We study a spatial two-strategy (cooperation and defection) Prisoner's Dilemma game with two types ($A$ and $B$) of players located on the sites of a square lattice. The evolution of strategy distribution is governed by iterated strategy adoption from a randomly selected neighbor with a probability depending on the payoff difference and also on the type of the neighbor. The strategy adoption probability is reduced by a pre-factor ($w < 1$) from the players of type $B$. We consider the competition between two opposite effects when increasing the number of neighbors ($k=4$, 8, and 24). Within a …
