Restoring spatial cooperation with myopic agents in a three-strategy social dilemma

TL;DR

This paper explores how introducing myopic decision-making in structured populations can enhance cooperation in social dilemmas, revealing new insights into the role of spatial structure and strategy complexity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that myopic agents in structured populations can promote cooperation, challenging traditional views on spatial structure's effects in social dilemmas.

Findings

Myopic agents foster cooperation in structured populations.

Spatial structure can be more conducive to cooperation with strategy complexity.

Transforming the game into a snow-drift scenario enhances cooperation.

Abstract

Introducing strategy complexity into the basic conflict of cooperation and defection is a natural response to avoid the tragedy of the common state. As an intermediate approach, quasi-cooperators were recently suggested to address the original problem. In this study, we test its vitality in structured populations where players have fixed partners. Naively, the latter condition should support cooperation unambiguously via enhanced network reciprocity. However, the opposite is true because the spatial structure may provide a humbler cooperation level than a well-mixed population. This unexpected behavior can be understood if we consider that at a certain parameter interval the original prisoner's dilemma game is transformed into a snow-drift game. If we replace the original imitating strategy protocol by assuming myopic players, the spatial population becomes a friendly environment for cooperation. This observation is valid in a huge region of parameter space. This study highlights that spatial structure can reveal a new aspect of social dilemmas when strategy complexity is introduced.