Collaboration drives phase transitions towards cooperation in prisoner's dilemma

TL;DR

This paper introduces a collaboration ring model where players in a network engage in the prisoner's dilemma, showing that cooperation can emerge through phase transitions influenced by players' collaboration tendencies and benefits, regardless of network structure.

Contribution

The study presents a novel network model with stochastic strategy updates demonstrating how cooperation arises via phase transitions in structured populations.

Findings

Cooperation emerges through non-equilibrium phase transitions.

Results are robust across different network configurations.

Collaboration propensity and benefits drive the transition to cooperation.

Abstract

We present a collaboration ring model -- a network of players playing the prisoner's dilemma game and collaborating among the nearest neighbours by forming coalitions. The microscopic stochastic updating of the players' strategies are driven by their innate nature of seeking selfish gains and shared intentionality. Cooperation emerges in such a structured population through non-equilibrium phase transitions driven by propensity of the players to collaborate and by the benefit that a cooperator generates. The robust results are qualitatively independent of number of neighbours and collaborators.