170 citations · 1.1k across the 33 of their papers we have counts for
34 papers
Hyperedge approximation for stochastic processes on higher-order networks
Anzhi Sheng, Alex McAvoy, Ye Tian +3
Graphs are a standard framework for describing dynamical processes shaped by pairwise interactions among agents. But many systems involve interactions in groups of three or more ag…
Meeting times on graphs in near-cubic time
Alex McAvoy
The expected meeting time of two random walkers on an undirected graph of size , where at each time step one walker moves and the process stops when they collide, satisfies a sy…
Expectation-enforcing strategies for repeated games
Nikos Dimou, Alex McAvoy
Originating in evolutionary game theory, the class of "zero-determinant" strategies enables a player to unilaterally enforce linear payoff relationships in simple repeated games. A…
PropensityBench: Evaluating Latent Safety Risks in Large Language Models via an Agentic Approach
Udari Madhushani Sehwag, Shayan Shabihi, Alex McAvoy +4
Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have sparked concerns over their potential to acquire and misuse dangerous or high-risk capabilities, posing frontier risks. Current…
Behavioral alignment in social networks
Yu Xia, Alex McAvoy, Qi Su
The orderly behaviors observed in large-scale groups, such as fish schooling and the organized movement of crowds, are both ubiquitous and essential for the survival and stability…
Promoting collective cooperation through temporal interactions
Yao Meng, Alex McAvoy, Aming Li
Collective cooperation drives the dynamics of many natural, social, and economic phenomena, making understanding the evolution of cooperation with evolutionary game theory a centra…
Frequency-dependent returns in nonlinear public goods games
Christoph Hauert, Alex McAvoy
When individuals interact in groups, the evolution of cooperation is traditionally modeled using the framework of public goods games. These models often assume that the return of t…
Evolution of reciprocity with limited payoff memory
Nikoleta E. Glynatsi, Alex McAvoy, Christian Hilbe
Direct reciprocity is a mechanism for the evolution of cooperation in repeated social interactions. According to this literature, individuals naturally learn to adopt conditionally…
Imitation dynamics on networks with incomplete information
Xiaochen Wang, Lei Zhou, Alex McAvoy +1
Imitation is an important learning heuristic in animal and human societies. Previous explorations report that the fate of individuals with cooperative strategies is sensitive to th…
Strategy evolution on temporal hypergraphs
Xiaochen Wang, Lei Zhou, Alex McAvoy +2
Individuals interact and cooperate in structured systems. Many studies represent this structure using static networks, where each link represents a permanent connection between two…
Strategy evolution on dynamic networks
Qi Su, Alex McAvoy, Joshua B. Plotkin
Models of strategy evolution on static networks help us understand how population structure can promote the spread of traits like cooperation. One key mechanism is the formation of…
Payoff landscapes and the robustness of selfish optimization in iterated games
Arjun Mirani, Alex McAvoy
In iterated games, a player can unilaterally exert influence over the outcome through a careful choice of strategy. A powerful class of such "payoff control" strategies was discove…
Selfish optimization and collective learning in populations
Alex McAvoy, Yoichiro Mori, Joshua B. Plotkin
A selfish learner seeks to maximize their own success, disregarding others. When success is measured as payoff in a game played against another learner, mutual selfishness typicall…
Evolutionary instability of selfish learning in repeated games
Alex McAvoy, Julian Kates-Harbeck, Krishnendu Chatterjee +1
Across many domains of interaction, both natural and artificial, individuals use past experience to shape future behaviors. The results of such learning processes depend on what in…
Evaluating the structure-coefficient theorem of evolutionary game theory
Alex McAvoy, John Wakeley
In order to accommodate the empirical fact that population structures are rarely simple, modern studies of evolutionary dynamics allow for complicated and highly-heterogeneous spat…
Evolution of prosocial behavior in multilayer populations
Qi Su, Alex McAvoy, Yoichiro Mori +1
Human societies include diverse social relationships. Friends, family, business colleagues, and online contacts can all contribute to one's social life. Individuals may behave diff…
The Moran process on 2-chromatic graphs
Kamran Kaveh, Alex McAvoy, Krishnendu Chatterjee +1
Resources are rarely distributed uniformly within a population. Heterogeneity in the concentration of a drug, the quality of breeding sites, or wealth can all affect evolutionary d…
Social goods dilemmas in heterogeneous societies
Alex McAvoy, Benjamin Allen, Martin A. Nowak
Prosocial behaviors are encountered in the donation game, the prisoner's dilemma, relaxed social dilemmas, and public goods games. Many studies assume that the population structure…
Fixation probabilities in evolutionary dynamics under weak selection
Alex McAvoy, Benjamin Allen
In evolutionary dynamics, a key measure of a mutant trait's success is the probability that it takes over the population given some initial mutant-appearance distribution. This "fi…
Evolutionary dynamics with game transitions
Qi Su, Alex McAvoy, Long Wang +1
The environment has a strong influence on a population's evolutionary dynamics. Driven by both intrinsic and external factors, the environment is subject to continual change in nat…
Reactive learning strategies for iterated games
Alex McAvoy, Martin A. Nowak
In an iterated game between two players, there is much interest in characterizing the set of feasible payoffs for both players when one player uses a fixed strategy and the other p…
Stationary frequencies and mixing times for neutral drift processes with spatial structure
Alex McAvoy, Ben Adlam, Benjamin Allen +1
We study a general setting of neutral evolution in which the population is of finite, constant size and can have spatial structure. Mutation leads to different genetic types ("trai…
Asymmetric evolutionary games with environmental feedback
Christoph Hauert, Camille Saade, Alex McAvoy
Models in evolutionary game theory traditionally assume symmetric interactions in homogeneous environments. Here, we consider populations evolving in a heterogeneous environment, w…
A mathematical formalism for natural selection with arbitrary spatial and genetic structure
Benjamin Allen, Alex McAvoy
We define a general class of models representing natural selection between two alleles. The population size and spatial structure are arbitrary, but fixed. Genetics can be haploid,…