Conditional strategies and the evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods games

Abstract

The fact that individuals will most likely behave differently in different situations begets the introduction of conditional strategies. Inspired by this, we study the evolution of cooperation in the spatial public goods game, where besides unconditional cooperators and defectors, also different types of conditional cooperators compete for space. Conditional cooperators will contribute to the public good only if other players within the group are likely to cooperate as well, but will withhold their contribution otherwise. Depending on the number of other cooperators that are required to elicit cooperation of a conditional cooperator, the latter can be classified in as many types as there are players within each group. We find that the most cautious cooperators, such that require all other players within a group to be conditional cooperators, are the undisputed victors of the evolutionary process, even at very low synergy factors. We show that the remarkable promotion of cooperation is due primarily to the spontaneous emergence of quarantining of defectors, which become surrounded by conditional cooperators and are forced into isolated convex "bubbles" from where they are unable to exploit the public good. This phenomenon can be observed only in structured populations, thus adding to the relevance of pattern formation for the successful evolution of cooperation.

7 two-column pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review E

References in corpus (11)

• Evolutionary games on graphs
• Reward and cooperation in the spatial public goods game
• Evolutionary establishment of moral and double moral standards through spatial interactions
• Resolving social dilemmas on evolving random networks
• Impact of critical mass on the evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods games
• Does strong heterogeneity promote cooperation by group interactions?
• Success-driven distribution of public goods promotes cooperation but preserves defection
• Emergent Hierarchical Structures in Multiadaptive Games
• Aspiration-induced reconnection in spatial public goods game
• Effects of inhomogeneous activity of players and noise on cooperation in spatial public goods games
• The Joker effect: cooperation driven by destructive agents

Cited by in corpus (32)

• Evolutionary dynamics of group interactions on structured populations: A review
• Self-organization of punishment in structured populations
• Risk-driven migration and the collective-risk social dilemma
• Effectiveness of conditional punishment for the evolution of public cooperation
• Collective behavior and evolutionary games - An introduction
• Competition of tolerant strategies in the spatial public goods game
• Evolution of emotions on networks leads to the evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas
• Environmental feedback drives cooperation in spatial social dilemmas
• Benefits of tolerance in public goods games
• Human behavior in Prisoner's Dilemma experiments suppresses network reciprocity
• Probabilistic interconnection between interdependent networks promotes cooperation in the public goods game
• Reentrant phase transitions and defensive alliances in social dilemmas with informed strategies
• Averting group failures in collective-risk social dilemmas
• Costly hide and seek pays: Unexpected consequences of deceit in a social dilemma
• Decelerated invasion and waning moon patterns in public goods games with delayed distribution
• Evolutionary dynamics of cooperation on interdependent networks with Prisoner's Dilemma and Snowdrift Game
• Cooperation driven by success-driven group formation
• Reciprocity-based cooperative phalanx maintained by overconfident players
• Cooperation percolation in spatial prisoner's dilemma game
• Evolution of cooperation in spatial traveler's dilemma game
• Social dilemma alleviated by sharing the gains with immediate neighbors
• Seven rules to avoid the tragedy of the commons
• Stability and robustness analysis of cooperation cycles driven by destructive agents in finite populations
• Group-size dependent synergy in heterogeneous populations
• Indirect exclusion can promote cooperation in repeated group interactions
• Threshold games and cooperation on multiplayer graphs
• Co-action provides rational basis for the evolutionary success of Pavlovian strategies
• The emergence of division of labor through decentralized social sanctioning
• The Dose of the Threat Makes the Resistance for Cooperation
• Perceptual Rationality: An Evolutionary Game Theory of Perceptually Rational Decision-Making
• The world of strategies with memory
• We both think you did wrong -- How agreement shapes and is shaped by indirect reciprocity