2012/08/14 by Attila Szolnoki, Zhen Wang, Matjaz Perc +1 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Artificial intelligence #Biological evolution #Biology #Computer science #Economics #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Microeconomics #Pairwise comparison #Process (computing) #Psychology #Reciprocity (cultural anthropology) #Social dilemma #Social psychology #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.soc-ph #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/srep00576
published as Sci. Rep. 2 (2012) 576 · 8 two-column pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in Scientific Reports
openalex publication_date 2012/08/14 · arxiv created 2012/08/20 · arxiv updated 2012/08/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Whether or not to change strategy depends not only on the personal success of each individual, but also on the success of others. Using this as motivation, we study the evolution of cooperation in games that describe social dilemmas, where the propensity to adopt a different strategy depends both on individual fitness as well as on the strategies of neighbors. Regardless of whether the evolutionary process is governed by pairwise or group interactions, we show that plugging into the "wisdom of groups" strongly promotes cooperative behavior. The more the wider knowledge is taken into account the more the evolution of defectors is impaired. We explain this by revealing a dynamically decelerated invasion process, by means of which interfaces separating different domains remain smooth and defectors therefore become unable to efficiently invade cooperators. This in turn invigorates spatial reciprocity and establishes decentralized decision making as very beneficial for resolving social dilemmas.