Emotion-based renewal strategies to promote cooperation in spatial prisoner’s dilemma games

Abstract

Individual interactions are accompanied by changes in emotions, and emotion can influence people’s decisions and thus the evolution of cooperation in a group. Therefore, it is very important and meaningful to consider how to apply emotions in the game so as to promote cooperation. However, emotions are not affected unilaterally in the interaction. It includes both the individual’s own emotions and their acceptance of the external, as well as the shock brought to the individual by the external emotions. In this paper, we propose a new model based on the prisoner’s dilemma to fully consider the influence of both internal and external factors in the change of emotion and the proportion of both sides on cooperation. The simulation shows that emotional stability is more effective in fostering cooperation. In other words, when the proportion of their own emotional continuity is higher and individuals are less accepting of their neighbors’ emotions, the more cooperation is facilitated and the former has a greater degree of influence on cooperation. Taken together, this results maybe provide a perspective, to some extent, on how to apply the condition of emotional change to facilitate the evolution of cooperation in groups in real-life situations.