Dynamical reciprocity in interacting games: numerical results and mechanism analysis

TL;DR

This paper investigates how interactions between different types of games on various networks can promote cooperation, revealing new dynamical routes and mechanisms that enhance cooperative behavior across diverse scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dynamical reciprocity mechanism in interacting games, supported by numerical results and mean-field theory, applicable to various network structures and game types.

Findings

Interaction promotes cooperation across all tested cases.

Strong interactions can eliminate phase transitions, leading to high cooperation.

Increasing the number of engaged games generally boosts cooperation levels.

Abstract

We study the evolution of two mutually interacting games with both pairwise games as well as the public goods game on different topologies. On 2d square lattices, we reveal that the game-game interaction can promote the cooperation prevalence in all cases, and the cooperation-defection phase transitions even become absent and fairly high cooperation is expected when the interaction goes to be very strong. A mean-field theory is developed that points out new dynamical routes arising therein. Detailed analysis shows indeed that there are rich categories of interactions in either individual or bulk scenario: invasion, neutral, and catalyzed types; their combination puts cooperators at a persistent advantage position, which boosts the cooperation. The robustness of the revealed reciprocity is strengthened by the studies of model variants, including asymmetrical or time-varying interactions, games of different types, games with time-scale separation, different updating rules etc. The structural complexities of the underlying population, such as Newman--Watts small world networks, Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi random networks, and Barab\'asi--Albert networks, also do not alter the working of the dynamical reciprocity. In particular, as the number of games engaged increases, the cooperation level continuously improves in general. Our work thus uncovers a new class of cooperation mechanism and indicates the great potential for human cooperation where concurrent issues are so often seen in the real world.