A mechanism of Individualistic Indirect Reciprocity with internal and external dynamics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new variant of indirect reciprocity called Individualistic Indirect Reciprocity, emphasizing agents' profit-driven strategies and environmental factors, revealing diverse societal structures through agent-based simulations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel model focusing on agents' attitudes and profit reinforcement, expanding understanding of cooperation dynamics in complex social environments.

Findings

Discriminatory stance prevails in most scenarios.

Cooperators emerge mainly under low visibility and high cooperation demand.

High obstinacy and demand lead to heterogeneous societies.

Abstract

The cooperation mechanism of indirect reciprocity has been studied by making multiple variations of its parts. This research proposes a new variant of Nowak and Sigmund model, focused on agents' attitude; it is called Individualistic Indirect Reciprocity. In our model, an agent reinforces its strategy to the extent to which it makes a profit. We also include conditions related to the environment, visibility of agents, cooperation demand, and the attitude of an agent to maintain his cooperation strategy. Using Agent-Based Model and a Data Science method, we show on simulation results that the discriminatory stance of the agents prevails in most cases. In general, cooperators only appear in conditions with low visibility of reputation and a high degree of cooperation demand. The results also show that when the reputation of others is unknown, with a high obstinacy and high cooperation demand, a heterogeneous society is obtained. The simulations show a wide diversity of scenarios, centralized, polarized, and mixed societies.