Altruism and reputation: cooperation within groups

TL;DR

This paper explores how altruism and reputation influence cooperation within groups, revealing community structures and the effects of group-biased altruism through modeling and algorithmic analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a bias favoring intra-group altruism and applies novel methods to detect community structures based on cooperation patterns.

Findings

Groups of cooperating agents are identified within the network.

The Newman algorithm reproduces initial altruism biases.

Differential equations reveal two distinct cooperative groups.

Abstract

In our recent model, the cooperation emerges as a positive feedback between a not-too-bad reputation and an altruistic attitude. Here we introduce a bias of altruism as to favorize members of the same group. The matrix F(i,j) of frequency of cooperation between agents i and j reveals the structure of communities. The Newman algorithm reproduces the initial bias. The method based on differential equations detects two groups of agents cooperating within their groups, leaving the uncooperative ones aside.