Title
Spreading Of Cooperative Behaviour Across Interdependent Groups
Abstract
Recent empirical research has shown that links between groups reinforce individuals within groups to adopt cooperative behaviour. Moreover, links between networks may induce cascading failures, competitive percolation, or contribute to efficient transportation. Here we show that there in fact exists an intermediate fraction of links between groups that is optimal for the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game. We consider individual groups with regular, random, and scale-free topology, and study their different combinations to reveal that an intermediate interdependence optimally facilitates the spreading of cooperative behaviour between groups. Excessive between-group links simply unify the two groups and make them act as one, while too rare between-group links preclude a useful information flow between the two groups. Interestingly, we find that between-group links are more likely to connect two cooperators than in-group links, thus supporting the conclusion that they are of paramount importance.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1038/srep02483
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Field
DocType
Volume
Interdependence,Interdependent networks,Public good,Computer science,Microeconomics,Cascading failure,Game theory,Dilemma,Social dilemma,Empirical research
Journal
3
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2045-2322
28
1.49
References 
Authors
16
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Luo-luo Jiang1999.33
Perc Matjaž257058.27