Evolution of cooperation under the aspiration-based interactive diversity in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game

Abstract

In the real world, an individual may have different attitudes towards his friends. From the perspective of the evolutionary game theory, it can be reflected that individuals tend to adopt different strategies towards different opponents, which can be defined as the interactive diversity. Up to now, the evolution of cooperation with individual characteristics under the interactive diversity still needs to be further explored. Herein, under the framework of interactive diversity, we consider the influence of individual aspiration on the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game, in which the parameter α is introduced to represent the individual aspiration level and used to measure individual satisfaction to the neighbors in the process of strategy updating. We find that for different temptations to defect, there is an optimal interval about the aspiration level α, which can significantly promote the evolution of cooperation. Moreover, we observe that the phase transition phenomenon for the cooperation exists, and the reason for this phenomenon to occur is also analyzed from the microscopic views. Overall, the current findings can provide some interesting insights into the role of individual aspiration and the interactive diversity in solving social dilemmas.