Impact of aging on the evolution of cooperation in the spatial prisoner’s dilemma game

Attila Szolnoki, Matjaž Perc, György Szabó, and Hans-Ulrich Stark
Phys. Rev. E 80, 021901 – Published 4 August 2009

Abstract

Aging is always present, tailoring our interactions with others, and postulating a finite lifespan during which we are able to exercise them. We consider the prisoner’s dilemma game on a square lattice and examine how quenched age distributions and different aging protocols influence the evolution of cooperation when taking the life experience and knowledge accumulation into account as time passes. In agreement with previous studies, we find that a quenched assignment of age to players, introducing heterogeneity to the game, substantially promotes cooperative behavior. Introduction of aging and subsequent death as a coevolutionary process may act detrimental on cooperation but enhances it efficiently if the offspring of individuals that have successfully passed their strategy is considered newborn. We study resulting age distributions of players and show that the heterogeneity is vital—yet insufficient—for explaining the observed differences in cooperator abundance on the spatial grid. The unexpected increment of cooperation levels can be explained by a dynamical effect that has a highly selective impact on the propagation of cooperator and defector states.

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  • Received 15 May 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.021901

©2009 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Attila Szolnoki1, Matjaž Perc2, György Szabó1, and Hans-Ulrich Stark3,4

  • 1Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science, P.O. Box 49, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary
  • 2Department of Physics, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor, Koroška cesta 160, SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia
  • 3SwissQuant Group AG, Universitätstrasse 9, CH-8006 Zurich, Switzerland
  • 4Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Kreuzplatz 5, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland

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Issue

Vol. 80, Iss. 2 — August 2009

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