Cooperation evolves more when players keep the interaction with unknown players

Abstract The existence of cooperation is mysterious. When a cooperator interacts with a cooperator more likely than a defector meets with a cooperator, the evolution of cooperation is possible. Thus far, some such mechanisms (e.g., direct reciprocity and group selection) have been proposed to explain the evolution of cooperation. A recent study considered the case where players can decide to stop the interaction with the current opponent and search for the next opponent, or to continue to interact with the current opponent. In this case, the situation where a cooperator interacts with a cooperator more likely than a defector meets with a cooperator can be realized and the evolution of cooperation is possible. Here, relevant to this mechanism is information deficiency. It is reasonable to suppose that players do not always know what the opponent players did. In this study, we aim to answer the following three questions: Will it promote the evolution of cooperation that the players keep the interaction with unknown players? Besides, will the absence of information about the opponent influence the evolution of cooperation? In addition, it is not obvious which strategy is more likely to evolve, a strategy who hopes to keep the interaction with unknown players or a strategy who stops the interaction with unknown players. By using a mathematical model, we reveal that the evolution of cooperation is more likely when players hope to keep the interaction with unknown players and that information deficiency disturbs the evolution of cooperation and that hoping to keep the interaction with unknown partners is likely to evolve for some cases and stopping the interaction with unknown partners is likely to evolve for other cases.

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