On the Role of Hypocrisy in Escaping the Tragedy of the Commons
Amos Korman, Robin Vacus

TL;DR
This paper explores how mild social-pressure and hypocritical behavior can promote cooperation in large spatial public goods games, revealing that intermediate pressure against hypocritical players fosters system-wide cooperation.
Contribution
It introduces a dynamic network model showing that moderate social-pressure on hypocritical players can transform defectors into cooperators, a novel insight into cooperation emergence.
Findings
Intermediate social-pressure on hypocritical players enables cooperation.
High or low pressure on hypocritical players prevents system cooperation.
Cooperation emerges rapidly when social-pressure against hypocrites is optimally set.
Abstract
We study the emergence of cooperation in large spatial public goods games. Without employing severe social-pressure against "defectors", or alternatively, significantly rewarding "cooperators", theoretical models typically predict a system collapse in a way that is reminiscent of the "tragedy-of-the-commons" metaphor. Drawing on a dynamic network model, this paper demonstrates how cooperation can emerge when the social-pressure is mild. This is achieved with the aid of an additional behavior called "hypocritical", which appears to be cooperative from the external observer's perspective but in fact hardly contributes to the social-welfare. Our model assumes that social-pressure is induced over both defectors and hypocritical players, but the extent of which may differ. Our main result indicates that the emergence of cooperation highly depends on the extent of social-pressure applied…
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