Different perceptions of social dilemmas: Evolutionary multigames in structured populations

TL;DR

This study explores how perception differences in social dilemmas, modeled as multigames in structured populations, promote cooperation through payoff heterogeneity and asymmetric strategy flow, with robustness across network types.

Contribution

It introduces evolutionary multigames with heterogeneous payoff perceptions in structured populations, revealing how payoff heterogeneity fosters cooperation via network reciprocity.

Findings

Payoff heterogeneity promotes cooperation.

Structured populations exhibit asymmetric strategy flow.

Results are robust across different networks and dynamic game perceptions.

Abstract

Motivated by the fact that the same social dilemma can be perceived differently by different players, we here study evolutionary multigames in structured populations. While the core game is the weak prisoner's dilemma, a fraction of the population adopts either a positive or a negative value of the sucker's payoff, thus playing either the traditional prisoner's dilemma or the snowdrift game. We show that the higher the fraction of the population adopting a different payoff matrix, the more the evolution of cooperation is promoted. The microscopic mechanism responsible for this outcome is unique to structured populations, and it is due to the payoff heterogeneity, which spontaneously introduces strong cooperative leaders that give rise to an asymmetric strategy imitation flow in favor of cooperation. We demonstrate that the reported evolutionary outcomes are robust against variations of the interaction network, and they also remain valid if players are allowed to vary which game they play over time. These results corroborate existing evidence in favor of heterogeneity-enhanced network reciprocity, and they reveal how different perceptions of social dilemmas may contribute to their resolution.