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Evolutionary Dynamics of Cooperation under the Distributed Prisoner’s Dilemma

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Book cover Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems (BIONETICS 2010)

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Abstract

Humans contribute to a broad range of cooperative endeavors. In many of them, the amount or effort contributed often depends on the social context of each individual. Recent evidence has shown how modern societies are grounded in complex and heterogeneous networks of exchange and cooperation, in which some individuals play radically different roles and/or interact more than others. We show that such social heterogeneity drastically affects the behavioral dynamics and promotes cooperative behavior, whenever the social dilemma perceived by each individual is contingent on her/his social context. The multiplicity of roles and contributions induced by realistic population structures is shown to transform an initial defection dominance dilemma into a coordination challenge or even a cooperator dominance game. While locally defection may seem inescapable, globally there is an emergent new dilemma in which cooperation often prevails, illustrating how collective cooperative action may emerge from myopic individual selfishness.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ATP-group, CMAF, Complexo Interdisciplinar, Lisboa, Portugal

    Flávio L. Pinheiro, Francisco C. Santos & Jorge M. Pacheco

  2. Centro de Física da Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Flávio L. Pinheiro

  3. DEI & INESC-ID, Instituto Superior Técnico, TU Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal

    Francisco C. Santos

  4. Dep. de Matemática e Aplicações, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Jorge M. Pacheco

Authors
  1. Flávio L. Pinheiro
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  2. Francisco C. Santos
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  3. Jorge M. Pacheco
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, 100 Morrissey Blvd, 02125, Boston, MA, USA

    Junichi Suzuki

  2. Graduate School of Engineering, 2-1 Yamada-oka, Suita, 565-0871, Osaka, Japan

    Tadashi Nakano

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© 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Pinheiro, F.L., Santos, F.C., Pacheco, J.M. (2012). Evolutionary Dynamics of Cooperation under the Distributed Prisoner’s Dilemma. In: Suzuki, J., Nakano, T. (eds) Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems. BIONETICS 2010. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 87. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32615-8_51

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32615-8_51

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32614-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32615-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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