Role of generosity and forgiveness: Return to a cooperative society

Abstract

One's reputation in human society depends on what and how one did in the past. If the reputation of a counterpart is too bad, we often avoid interacting with the individual. We introduce a selective cooperator called the goodie, who participates in the prisoner's dilemma game dependent on the opponent's reputation, and study its role in forming a cooperative society. We observe enhanced cooperation when goodies have a small but nonzero probability of playing the game with an individual who defected in previous rounds. Our finding implies that even this small generosity of goodies can provide defectors chances of encountering the better world of cooperation, encouraging them to escape from their isolated world of selfishness.