Effects of compassion on the evolution of cooperation in spatial social dilemmas

Yumeng Li, Jun Zhang and Matjaž Perc

Applied Mathematics and Computation, 2018, vol. 320, issue C, 437-443

Abstract: Cooperation plays an essential role in the evolution of social species, chief among all in humans. In this paper, we study the effects of compassion on the evolution of cooperation in spatial social dilemmas by introducing a payoff redistribution mechanism. In particular, a player whose payoff is larger than the average in its neighborhood will share some it with its comparatively poor neighbors. We find that such a simple redistribution mechanism, which we interpret as a form of compassion, significantly promotes the evolution of cooperation. While traditional network reciprocity already supports the formation of compact cooperative clusters, an in-depth analysis of payoff transfer events between players reveals an enhanced form of this phenomenon through the reinforcement of payoffs of cooperators that reside along the borders of such clusters. This significantly enhances the resilience of cooperative clusters, who are in turn able to survive even at adverse conditions where traditional network reciprocity alone would long fail. We show that the observed positive effects of compassion on the evolution of cooperation are robust to changes of the interaction network and to changes in the type of the governing social dilemma.

Keywords: Cooperation; Social dilemma; Pattern formation; Compassion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0096300317306896
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:apmaco:v:320:y:2018:i:c:p:437-443

DOI: 10.1016/j.amc.2017.10.002

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Mathematics and Computation is currently edited by Theodore Simos

More articles in Applied Mathematics and Computation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().