Heterogeneous update mechanisms in evolutionary games: mixing innovative and imitative dynamics

TL;DR

This paper explores how combining imitative and innovative strategy update mechanisms in evolutionary games affects social cooperation, revealing that heterogeneity can both promote and hinder cooperative behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a model analyzing heterogeneous populations with both imitative and innovative agents, providing analytical and numerical insights into their combined effects.

Findings

Mixing update mechanisms can enhance cooperation in some cases.

Heterogeneity in strategy revision methods leads to complex dynamics.

Innovation can sometimes be detrimental to cooperation.

Abstract

Innovation and evolution are two processes of paramount relevance for social and biological systems. In general, the former allows to introduce elements of novelty, while the latter is responsible for the motion of a system in its phase space. Often, these processes are strongly related, since an innovation can trigger the evolution, and the latter can provide the optimal conditions for the emergence of innovations. Both processes can be studied by using the framework of Evolutionary Game Theory, where evolution constitutes an intrinsic mechanism, while innovation requires an opportune representation. Notably, innovation can be modeled as a strategy, or can constitute the underlying mechanism which allows agents to change strategy. Here, we analyze the second case, investigating the behavior of a heterogeneous population, composed of imitative and innovative agents. Imitative agents change strategy only by imitating that of their neighbors, whereas innovative ones change strategy without the need of a copying source. The proposed model is analyzed by means of analytical calculations and numerical simulations in a square lattice. Remarkably, results indicate that the mixing of mechanisms can lead to different behaviors, being sometimes beneficial and others detrimental to cooperation. Our investigation sheds some light on the complex dynamics emerging from the heterogeneity of strategy revision methods, highlighting the role of innovation in evolutionary games.