Evolving Cooperation in the N-player Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Social Network Model

Abstract

We introduce a social network based model to investigate the evolution of cooperation in the N-player prisoner’s dilemma game. Agents who play cooperatively form social links, which are reinforced by subsequent cooperative actions. Agents tend to interact with players from their social network. However, when an agent defects, the links with its opponents in that game are broken. We examine two different scenarios: (a) where all agents are equipped with a pure strategy, and (b) where some agents play with a mixed strategy. In the mixed case, agents base their decision on a function of the weighted links within their social network. Detailed simulation experiments show that the proposed model is able to promote cooperation. Social networks play an increasingly important role in promoting and sustaining cooperation in the mixed strategy case. An analysis of the emergent social networks shows that they are characterized by high average clustering and broad-scale heterogeneity, especially for a relatively small number of players per game.