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Human behavior in Prisoner's Dilemma experiments suppresses network reciprocity
Carlos Gracia-Lázaro1, José A Cuesta, Angel Sánchez
1Instituto de Biocomputación y Física de Sistemas Complejos (BIFI), Universidad de Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain.
Scientific Reports
|March 23, 2012
Summary
Human behavior in the Prisoner's Dilemma game shows consistent cooperation levels across different network structures. This finding holds true regardless of population structure when including conditional cooperators.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary Game Theory
- Network Science
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Strategic interactions on complex networks are extensively studied.
- The Prisoner's Dilemma is a key model for understanding cooperation.
- Network structure significantly impacts evolutionary dynamics in game theory.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of real human behavior on cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma.
- To determine if population structure influences cooperation levels when considering heterogeneous human strategies.
- To compare cooperation in structured networks versus well-mixed populations.
Main Methods:
- Experimental analysis of human subjects playing the Prisoner's Dilemma.
- Modeling interactions on complex networks and at the mean-field level.
- Incorporating heterogeneous strategies: cooperators, defectors, and conditional cooperators.
Main Results:
- Observed cooperation levels remained consistent across different network structures and mean-field conditions.
- The presence of 'moody' conditional cooperators equalized cooperation outcomes.
- Population structure did not significantly promote or inhibit cooperation compared to well-mixed populations.
Conclusions:
- Real human behavior, particularly with conditional strategies, mitigates the effect of network structure on cooperation.
- The findings challenge the notion that complex networks inherently alter cooperation outcomes in strategic interactions.
- Cooperation levels in heterogeneous populations are robust to network topology.
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