Coevolution between the cost of decision and the strategy contributes to the evolution of cooperation

Abstract

Cooperation is still an important issue for both evolutionary and social scientists. There are some remarkable methods for sustaining cooperation. On the other hand, various studies discuss whether human deliberative behaviour promotes or inhibits cooperation. As those studies of human behaviour develop, in the study of evolutionary game theory, models considering deliberative behaviour of game players are increasing. Based on that trend, the author considers that decision of a person requires certain time and imposes a psychological burden on him/her and defines such burden as the cost of decision. This study utilizes the model of evolutionary game theory that each player plays the spatial prisoner’s dilemma game with opponent players connected to him/her and introduces the cost of decision. The main result of this study is that the introduction of the cost of decision contributes to the evolution of cooperation, although there are some differences in the extent of its contribution regarding the three types of sparse topology of connections. Regarding the distribution of the cost of decision, especially in the case of the scale-free topology of connections, players with high cost of decision, which seem to be disadvantageous at first glance, sometimes become mainstream at the last.