Promotion of cooperation in social dilemma games via generalised indirect reciprocity

Abstract

This paper presents a novel generalised indirect reciprocity approach for promoting cooperation in social dilemma games. Here, players decide upon an action to play in the game based on public information (or “external cues”) rather than individual-specific information. The public information is constantly updated according to the underlying learning model. Comprehensive simulation experiments using the N-player Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) and Snowdrift (SD) games show that generalised indirect reciprocity promotes high levels of cooperation across a wide range of conditions. This is despite the fact that the make-up of player groups is continually changing. As expected, the extent of cooperative behaviour observed in the “constraint-relaxed” N-player SD game is significantly higher than the N-player PD game. Our proposed generalised indirect reciprocity model may shed light on the conundrum of cooperation between anonymous individuals.