High Cost of Survival Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation
Living organisms expend energy to sustain survival, a process which is reliant on consuming resources—termed here as the “cost of survival”. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), a classic model of social interaction, individual payoffs depend on choices to either provide benefits to others at a personal...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Games |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/16/1/4 |
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| Summary: | Living organisms expend energy to sustain survival, a process which is reliant on consuming resources—termed here as the “cost of survival”. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), a classic model of social interaction, individual payoffs depend on choices to either provide benefits to others at a personal cost (cooperate) or exploit others to maximize personal gain (defect). We demonstrate that in an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD), a simple “Always Cooperate” (ALLC) strategy evolves and remains evolutionarily stable when the cost of survival is sufficiently high, meaning exploited cooperators have a low probability of survival. We derive a rule for the evolutionary stability of cooperation, <b><i>x/z ></i></b><i>T/R</i>, where <i>x</i> represents the duration of mutual cooperation, <i>z</i> the duration of exploitation, <i>T</i> the defector’s free-riding payoff, and <i>R</i> the payoff for mutual cooperation. This finding suggests that higher survival costs can enhance social welfare by selecting for cooperative strategies. |
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| ISSN: | 2073-4336 |