Explosive cooperation in social dilemmas on higher-order networks

Abstract

Understanding how cooperative behaviours can emerge from competitive interactions is an open problem in biology and social sciences. While interactions are usually modelled as pairwise networks, the units of many real-world systems can also interact in groups of three or more. Here, we introduce a general framework to extend pairwise games to higher-order networks. By studying social dilemmas on hypergraphs with a tunable structure, we find an explosive transition to cooperation triggered by a critical number of higher-order games. The associated bistable regime implies that an initial critical mass of cooperators is also required for the emergence of prosocial behavior. Our results show that higher-order interactions provide a novel explanation for the survival of cooperation.

4 pages, 3 figures in the manuscript. 6 pages, 4 figures in the supplemental material

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• Unlearnable Games and "Satisficing'' Decisions: A Simple Model for a Complex World
• Higher-order evolutionary dynamics with game transitions
• Dynamical fluctuations of random walks in higher-order networks
• The rules of multiplayer cooperation in networks of communities
• Steering cooperation: Adversarial attacks on prisoner's dilemma in complex networks
• Higher-order shortest paths in hypergraphs
• Triadic percolation on multilayer networks
• Group adaptation drives opinion dynamics in higher-order networks
• Explosive adoption of corrupt behaviors in social systems with higher-order interactions
• Indirect punishment can outperform direct punishment in promoting cooperation in structured populations
• Payoff-Driven Coevolution and Oscillatory Dynamics in Hypergraph
• The relevance of higher-order ties
• Discontinuous Wealth-Gradient Transition Driving Cooperation