Reciprocity-based cooperative phalanx maintained by overconfident players

09/05/2018

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by   Attila Szolnoki, et al.

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According to the evolutionary game theory principle, a strategy representing a higher payoff can spread among competitors. But there are cases when a player consistently overestimates or underestimates her own payoff, which undermines proper comparison. Interestingly, both underconfident and overconfident individuals are capable of elevating the cooperation level significantly. While former players stimulate a local coordination of strategies, the presence of overconfident individuals enhances the spatial reciprocity mechanism. In both cases the propagations of competing strategies are influenced in a biased way resulting in a cooperation supporting environment. These effects are strongly related to the nonlinear character of invasion probabilities which is a common and frequently observed feature of microscopic dynamics.