Cooperation guided by imitation, aspiration and conformity-driven dynamics in evolutionary games

Pursuing maximal profit is a general motivation for rational players to update their strategies in evolutionary games. Players could either imitate the more successful neighbors or adjust strategy based on their own aspirations, which is known as imitation-driven or aspiration-driven strategy-updating rule in evolution dynamics. Besides, there exist some other pervasive motivations for the social players. For example, complying to the majority might be an effective choice to mitigate the costs of decision and help players adapt to the environment. Along this way, the strategy-updating rule based on conformity is usually called conformity-driven updating. In this work, we assume these alternative strategy-updating rules coevolve with the strategies of players during the evolution process. Our results show that, one of the three strategy-updating rules prevails throughout the population in most parameter regions, while they could coexist in a small parameter region. Meanwhile, we find that, in a large parameter area, the alliances of the conformity-driven and the aspiration-driven cooperators can boost the cooperation to a rather high level during the evolution. Moreover, such alliances play key roles in the boom of cooperation for some parameter regions which might be otherwise dominated by defectors. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In the evolutionary games, players' strategy updates are influenced by motivations such as imitation, aspiration, and conformity. One of the three strategy-updating rules typically prevails in most parameter regions, but they can coexist in a small parameter region. Furthermore, alliances between conformity-driven and aspiration-driven cooperators can significantly boost cooperation levels during the evolution process.