The collapse of cooperation in evolving games
arXiv:1402.6628 · doi:10.1073/pnas.1408618111
Abstract
Game theory provides a quantitative framework for analyzing the behavior of rational agents. The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma in particular has become a standard model for studying cooperation and cheating, with cooperation often emerging as a robust outcome in evolving populations. Here we extend evolutionary game theory by allowing players' strategies as well as their payoffs to evolve in response to selection on heritable mutations. In nature, many organisms engage in mutually beneficial interactions, and individuals may seek to change the ratio of risk to reward for cooperation by altering the resources they commit to cooperative interactions. To study this, we construct a general framework for the co-evolution of strategies and payoffs in arbitrary iterated games. We show that, as payoffs evolve, a trade-off between the benefits and costs of cooperation precipitates a dramatic loss of cooperation under the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma; and eventually to evolution away from the Prisoner's Dilemma altogether. The collapse of cooperation is so extreme that the average payoff in a population may decline, even as the potential payoff for mutual cooperation increases. Our work offers a new perspective on the Prisoner's Dilemma and its predictions for cooperation in natural populations; and it provides a general framework to understand the co-evolution of strategies and payoffs in iterated interactions.
33 pages, 13 figures
References in corpus (4)
Cited by in corpus (31)
- Evolutionary dynamics with game transitions
- Environmental feedback drives cooperation in spatial social dilemmas
- Coevolutionary dynamics via adaptive feedback in collective-risk social dilemma game
- Eco-evolutionary dynamics with environmental feedback: cooperation in a changing world
- Evolutionary dynamics of group cooperation with asymmetrical environmental feedback
- Comparing reactive and memory-one strategies of direct reciprocity
- Steering Eco-Evolutionary Games Dynamics with Manifold Control
- Evolutionary consequences of behavioral diversity
- When selection pays: structured public goods game with a generalized interaction mode
- Avoiding the bullies: The resilience of cooperation among unequals
- Mutation enhances cooperation in direct reciprocity
- Five rules for friendly rivalry in direct reciprocity
- Coevolutionary dynamics of feedback-evolving games in structured populations
- Collective self-optimization of communicating active particles
- Evolutionary instability of selfish learning in repeated games
- Mutation mitigates finite-size effects in spatial evolutionary games
- Evolutionary Game Dynamics for Two Interacting Populations under Environmental Feedback
- The Art of War: Beyond Memory-one Strategies in Population Games
- Learning enables adaptation in cooperation for multi-player stochastic games
- Dynamic Evolution of Cooperation Based on Adaptive Reputation Threshold and Game Transition
- Evolution of direct reciprocity in group-structured populations
- Individual perception dynamics in drunk games
- Effects of Stochastic Games on Evolutionary Dynamics in Structured Populations
- General non-linear imitation leads to limit cycles in eco-evolutionary dynamics
- Friendly-rivalry solution to the iterated -person public-goods game
- Grouping promotes both partnership and rivalry with long memory in direct reciprocity
- Exploitation by asymmetry of information reference in coevolutionary learning in prisoner's dilemma game
- Small games and long memories promote cooperation
- The Search for Computational Intelligence
- Oscillatory evolution of collective behavior in evolutionary games played with reinforcement learning
- Extortion outperforms generosity in iterated Prisoners' Dilemma