Partially and Wholly Overlapping Networks: The Evolutionary Dynamics of Social Dilemmas on Social Networks

It has been widely accepted that the evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas is likely to have simultaneous effects on different levels of networks—that is, overlapping networks. In this scenario, we apply the evolutionary dynamics of social dilemmas (the Prisoner’s dilemma and the Stag Hunt) to two levels of networks, playing network interaction game (scale-free networks) and imitating the strategies of dynamic learning networks by concentrating on the levels of dynamically overlapping levels in both networks. It was found that the higher level of dynamically overlap can promote the emergence of cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Stag Hunt. When networks overlap dynamically, it leads to cooperation in the Stag Hunt; when the networks do not overlap, cooperation will not occur in the Prisoner’s dilemma. Specifically, if two kinds of networks in the real world truly dynamically overlap at least partially, in some sense, the self-organizing phenomenon arising out of the overlapping effect could solve “coordination failure” in the market without external enforcement mechanisms, which contradicts conventional intervention polices.