Abstract
Direct and indirect reciprocity are good candidates to explain the fundamental problem of evolution of cooperation. We explore the conditions under which different types of reciprocity gain dominance and their performances in sustaining cooperation in the PD played on simple networks. We confirm that direct reciprocity gains dominance over indirect reciprocity strategies also in larger populations, as long as it has no memory constraints. In the absence of direct reciprocity, or when its memory is flawed, different forms of indirect reciprocity strategies are able to dominate and to support cooperation. We show that indirect reciprocity relying on social capital inherent in closed triads is the best competitor among them, outperforming indirect reciprocity that uses information from any source. Results hold in a wide range of conditions with different evolutionary update rules, extent of evolutionary pressure, initial conditions, population size, and density.
Highlights
Motivated by the sociological debate on the nature of social capital[38,41,42,43,50,67], we focus on the relative efficiency of Connected and Unconnected Reciprocity strategies
Connected Reciprocity benefits from social closure and relies on information from those individuals who are tied to the partner
Our main question origins in the dilemma whether indirect reciprocity is able to operate efficiently due to cohesive aspects of social capital in closed circles or because it utilizes any available information about the partner, from those who are not direct interaction partners
Summary
Direct and indirect reciprocity are good candidates to explain the fundamental problem of evolution of cooperation. As direct reciprocity retaliates defection and rewards cooperation, indirect reciprocity strategies evaluate past actions or the resulting reputation of the interaction partner. A precise account of all simple indirect reciprocity norms that consider a partner as good or bad based on his or her action (cooperation or defection) and on the reputation of his or her previous opponent (good or bad) is analyzed by Ohtsuki and Iwasa[30,31,32], who found that strategies that are labeled as “leading eight” can maintain cooperation via indirect reciprocity. We label indirect reciprocity that relies on social closure as Connected Reciprocity and contrast its performance with Unconnected Reciprocity that benefits from information from directly unrelated third parties The latter strategy does not rely on closed circles of interactions, and cooperates with partner B, if B cooperated in his previous interaction. By contrasting indirect reciprocity that conditions behavior on information from direct social ties with indirect reciprocity that conditions behavior on information from indirectly related individuals, we contribute to the evaluation of social network based and of impersonal reputation systems
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
