title: Randomness in the evolution of cooperation.
abstract: Tag-based ethnocentric cooperation is a highly robust behavior which can evolve and prevail under a wide variety of conditions. Recent studies have demonstrated, however, that ethnocentrism can temporarily be suppressed by other competing strategies, especially in its early evolutionary stages. In a series of computational experiments, conducted with an agent-based evolutionary model of tag-mediated cooperation, we addressed the question of whether a stochastically established and once dominant non-ethnocentric strategy such as indiscriminate altruism can stably persist and permanently outweigh ethnocentrism. Our model, simulated on various complex network topologies, employs simple haploid genetics and asexual reproduction of computational agents equipped with memory and heritable phenotypic traits. We find that in combination with an implemented memory mechanism and tags, random bias acting in favor of altruists can lead to their long-lasting victory over all other types of strategists. The difference in density between altruistic and ethnocentric cooperators increases with greater rewiring of the underlying network, but decreases with growing population size. These findings suggest that randomness plays an important role in promoting non-ethnocentric cooperation and contributes to our understanding of how other than adaptive mechanisms can initiate the design of novel behavioral phenotypes, thereby shaping surprisingly new evolutionary pathways.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Graz, A-8010 Graz, Austria. Electronic address: tarik.hadzibeganovic@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Tarik
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hadzibeganovic
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, D-50923 Köln, Germany. Electronic address: dstauff@thp.uni-koeln.de.
authors.forename: Dietrich
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Stauffer
authors.affiliation: Alibaba Research Center for Complexity Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 311121, China. Electronic address: xp@hznu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Xiao-Pu
authors.initials: XP
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D000533:Altruism; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005006:Ethnicity; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011287:Prejudice / Q000523:psychology; D000068956:Prisoner Dilemma; D012919:Social Behavior; D012984:Software
keywords: Agent-based model; Altruism; Evolution of cooperation; Randomness; Tag-based cooperation