Optimism brings accurate perception in Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

TL;DR

This paper studies how optimism influences decision-making in an extended Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, showing that optimism improves cooperation accuracy despite vulnerability to defectors.

Contribution

It introduces a model linking optimism levels to cooperative behavior, demonstrating that optimism enhances exploration and cooperation accuracy in multi-agent systems.

Findings

Optimism improves cooperation accuracy in the model.

Optimistic agents explore more effectively.

Optimism increases resilience against defectors.

Abstract

We analyze an extended model of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma where agents decide to play based on the data from their limited memory or recommendations. The cooperators can decide whether to play with the matched opponent or not. The agents' decisions are directly linked to their level of optimism since they decide to play if they believe the opponent has a high probability of cooperating. Optimism is precisely tuned by parameters optimism threshold and tolerance. Our experiment showed that being optimistic is better for cooperators as it leads to more accurate exploration in the multi-agent system, which tolerates the vulnerability against defectors.