Impact of interaction style and degree on the evolution of cooperation on Barabási-Albert scale-free network.

Fengjie Xie,Jun Lin,Jing Shi,Wen-Bo Du

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0182523

Abstract

In this work, we study an evolutionary prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG) on Barabási–Albert scale-free networks with limited player interactions, and explore the effect of interaction style and degree on cooperation. The results show that high-degree preference interaction, namely the most applicable interaction in the real world, is less beneficial for emergence of cooperation on scale-free networks than random interaction. Besides, cooperation on scale-free networks is enhanced with the increase of interaction degree regardless whether the interaction is high-degree preference or random. If the interaction degree is very low, the cooperation level on scale-free networks is much lower than that on regular ring networks, which is against the common belief that scale-free networks must be more beneficial for cooperation. Our analysis indicates that the interaction relations, the strategy and the game payoff of high-connectivity players play important roles in the evolution of cooperation on scale-free networks. A certain number of interactions are necessary for scale-free networks to exhibit strong capability of facilitating cooperation. Our work provides important insight for members on how to interact with others in a social organization.

Highlights

Understanding the emergence of cooperation among selfish individuals is one of the central topics in evolutionary game theory [1].This problem remains a challenge in a social dilemma situation because the evolutionary equilibrium predicted by game theory is defection, not cooperation
Many natural and social scientists have investigated the possible mechanisms for the emergence of cooperation in a popular social dilemma, i.e., prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG)
In order to investigate whether the overwhelming advantage of scale-free networks against regular ring networks found in literature [21] still exist while limited interaction is considered, the game dynamics defined by Eq (3) and Eq (4) is run on a corresponding regular ring network where all players have a degree of W, which is called ring-W network here

Summary

Introduction

Understanding the emergence of cooperation among selfish individuals is one of the central topics in evolutionary game theory [1].This problem remains a challenge in a social dilemma situation because the evolutionary equilibrium predicted by game theory is defection, not cooperation.

Results

Conclusion