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Updated: May 24, 2026

The HoneyComb Paradigm for Research on Collective Human Behavior
Published on: January 19, 2019
Cooperation and age structure in spatial games
Zhen Wang1, Zhen Wang, Xiaodan Zhu
1School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China.
Abstract:
We study the evolution of cooperation in evolutionary spatial games when the payoff correlates with the increasing age of players (the level of correlation is set through a single parameter, α). The demographic heterogeneous age distribution, directly affecting the outcome of the game, is thus shown to be responsible for enhancing the cooperative behavior in the population. In particular, moderate values of α allow cooperators not only to survive but to outcompete defectors, even when the temptation to defect is large and the ageless, standard α=0 model does not sustain cooperation. The interplay between age structure and noise is also considered, and we obtain the conditions for optimal levels of cooperation.
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