Interaction stochasticity supports cooperation in spatial Prisoner's dilemma

Interaction stochasticity supports cooperation in spatial Prisoner’s dilemma

Xiaojie Chen, Feng Fu, and Long Wang

Phys. Rev. E 78, 051120 – Published 24 November 2008

Abstract

Previous studies mostly assume deterministic interactions among neighboring individuals for games on graphs. In this paper, we relax this assumption by introducing stochastic interactions into the spatial Prisoner’s dilemma game, and study the effects of interaction stochasticity on the evolution of cooperation. Interestingly, simulation results show that there exists an optimal region of the intensity of interaction resulting in a maximum cooperation level. Moreover, we find good agreement between simulation results and theoretical predictions obtained from an extended pair-approximation method. We also show some typical snapshots of the system and investigate the mean payoffs for cooperators and defectors. Our results may provide some insight into understanding the emergence of cooperation in the real world where the interactions between individuals take place in an intermittent manner.

Received 5 August 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.78.051120

Authors & Affiliations

Xiaojie Chen^1,*, Feng Fu^2,†, and Long Wang^1,‡

¹State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Center for Systems and Control, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
²Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

^*xjchen@pku.edu.cn
^†fengfu@fas.harvard.edu
^‡longwang@pku.edu.cn

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Vol. 78, Iss. 5 — November 2008

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Physical Review E

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