Modeling the social dilemma of involution on a square lattice

Abstract

Involution refers to the over-generation meaningless competition in society when the total amount of social resources is fixed. With the help of spatial evolutionary game theory, this paper models the social dilemma of involution on a square lattice. It is assumed that an agent can adopt a strategy of either devoting more effort or devoting less effort. When devoting more effort, the agent can acquire more social resources by paying more than those who devote less effort. Meanwhile, the total amount of social resources obtained by the group remains unchanged. The agents synchronously update strategies. We measure the degree of involution by the fraction of the strategy of more effort in the system. The model is investigated from three perspectives: the abundance of social resources, the social temperature in resource distribution, and the cost of more effort. The results show that more abundant social resources lead to the involution, an increase in social temperature in resource distribution suppresses the involution, and an increase in the cost of more effort does not always aggravate or suppress the involution. The results in this paper provide society with qualitative conclusions to resist involution.