Lying on networks: The role of structure and topology in promoting honesty

Abstract

Lies can have a negating impact on governments, companies, and the society as a whole. Understanding the dynamics of lying is therefore of crucial importance across different fields of research. While lying has been studied before in well-mixed populations, it is a fact that real interactions are rarely well-mixed. Indeed, they are usually structured and thus best described by networks. Here we therefore use the Monte Carlo method to study the evolution of lying in the sender-receiver game in a one-parameter family of networks, systematically covering complete networks, small-world networks, and one-dimensional rings. We show that lies which benefit the sender at a cost to the receiver, the so-called black lies, are less likely to proliferate on networks than they do in well-mixed populations. Honesty is thus more likely to evolve, but only when the benefit for the sender is smaller than the cost for the receiver. Moreover, this effect is particularly strong in small-world networks, but less so in the one-dimensional ring. For lies that favor the receiver at a cost to the sender, the so-called altruistic white lies, we show that honesty is also more likely to evolve than it is in well-mixed populations. But contrary to black lies, this effect is more expressed in the one-dimensional ring, whereas in small-world networks it is present only when the cost to the sender is greater than the benefit for the receiver. Lastly, for lies that benefit both the sender and the receiver, the so-called Pareto white lies, we show that the network structure actually favors the evolution of lying, but this only when the benefit for the sender is slightly greater than the benefit for the receiver. In this case again the small-world topology acts as an amplifier of the effect, while other network topologies fail to do the same.

arXiv comment11 two-column pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (24)

• Emergence of scaling in random networks
• Statistical physics of social dynamics
• Epidemic processes in complex networks
• Multilayer Networks
• The structure and dynamics of multilayer networks
• Statistical physics of human cooperation
• Statistical physics of vaccination
• Evolutionary games on multilayer networks: A colloquium
• Co-evolution of strategy and structure in complex networks with dynamical linking
• Reward and cooperation in the spatial public goods game
• Statistical physics of crime: A review
• Defense mechanisms of empathetic players in the spatial ultimatum game
• Correlation of positive and negative reciprocity fails to confer an evolutionary advantage: Phase transitions to elementary strategies
• Grand challenges in social physics: In pursuit of moral behavior
• Emergent Hierarchical Structures in Multiadaptive Games
• Second-order freeriding on antisocial punishment restores the effectiveness of prosocial punishment
• The effect of the topology on the spatial ultimatum game
• Accuracy in strategy imitations promotes the evolution of fairness in the spatial ultimatum game
• Evolution of gossip-based indirect reciprocity on a bipartite network
• Ecosystems with mutually exclusive interactions self-organize to a state of high diversity
• The evolution of lying in well-mixed populations
• Partner selection supported by opaque reputation promotes cooperative behavior
• Critical behavior in an evolutionary Ultimatum Game
• Random Topologies and the emergence of cooperation: the role of short-cuts

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Networks beyond pairwise interactions: structure and dynamics
• Mathematical foundations of moral preferences
• The evolution of trust and trustworthiness
• Evolution of honesty in higher-order social networks
• Language-based game theory in the age of artificial intelligence
• From Outcome-Based to Language-Based Preferences
• Contrarians synchronize beyond the limit of pairwise interactions
• Optimization of institutional incentives for cooperation in structured populations
• Decoding trust: A reinforcement learning perspective
• Evolution of trust in structured populations
• Temporal Interaction and its Role in the Evolution of Cooperation
• Cluster structure of optimal solutions in bipartitioning of small worlds
• When Less is More: Evolutionary Dynamics of Deception in a Sender-Receiver Game
• Hallmarks of Deception in Asset-Exchange Models