Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems. 5th International ICST Conference, BIONETICS 2010, Boston, USA, December 1-3, 2010, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

Evolutionary Dynamics of Cooperation under the Distributed Prisoner’s Dilemma

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-32615-8_51,
        author={Fl\^{a}vio Pinheiro and Francisco Santos and Jorge Pacheco},
        title={Evolutionary Dynamics of Cooperation under the Distributed Prisoner’s Dilemma},
        proceedings={Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems. 5th International ICST Conference, BIONETICS 2010, Boston, USA, December 1-3, 2010, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={BIONETICS},
        year={2012},
        month={10},
        keywords={Cooperation Complex Networks Self-Organization Evolutionary Game Theory},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-642-32615-8_51}
    }
    
  • Flávio Pinheiro
    Francisco Santos
    Jorge Pacheco
    Year: 2012
    Evolutionary Dynamics of Cooperation under the Distributed Prisoner’s Dilemma
    BIONETICS
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-32615-8_51
Flávio Pinheiro, Francisco Santos, Jorge Pacheco

    Abstract

    Humans contribute to a broad range of cooperative endeavors. In many of them, the amount or effort contributed often depends on the social context of each individual. Recent evidence has shown how modern societies are grounded in complex and heterogeneous networks of exchange and cooperation, in which some individuals play radically different roles and/or interact more than others. We show that such social heterogeneity drastically affects the behavioral dynamics and promotes cooperative behavior, whenever the social dilemma perceived by each individual is contingent on her/his social context. The multiplicity of roles and contributions induced by realistic population structures is shown to transform an initial defection dominance dilemma into a coordination challenge or even a cooperator dominance game. While locally defection may seem inescapable, globally there is an emergent new dilemma in which cooperation often prevails, illustrating how collective cooperative action may emerge from myopic individual selfishness.