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Heterogeneous resource allocation can change social hierarchy in public goods games.

ABSTRACT: Public goods games (PGGs) represent one of the most useful tools to study group interactions. However, even if they could provide an explanation for the emergence and stability of cooperation in modern societies, they are not able to reproduce some key features observed in social and economical interactions. The typical shape of wealth distribution-known as Pareto Law-and the microscopic organization of wealth production are two of them. Here, we introduce a modification to the classical formulation of PGGs that allows for the emergence of both of these features from first principles. Unlike traditional PGGs, where players contribute equally to all the games in which they participate, we allow individuals to redistribute their contribution according to what they earned in previous rounds. Results from numerical simulations show that not only a Pareto distribution for the pay-offs naturally emerges but also that if players do not invest enough in one round they can act as defectors even if they are formally cooperators. Our results not only give an explanation for wealth heterogeneity observed in real data but also point to a conceptual change on cooperation in collective dilemmas.

SUBMITTER: Meloni S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5383863 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Heterogeneous resource allocation can change social hierarchy in public goods games.

Meloni Sandro S Xia Cheng-Yi CY Moreno Yamir Y

Royal Society open science 20170308 3

Public goods games (PGGs) represent one of the most useful tools to study group interactions. However, even if they could provide an explanation for the emergence and stability of cooperation in modern societies, they are not able to reproduce some key features observed in social and economical interactions. The typical shape of wealth distribution-known as Pareto Law-and the microscopic organization of wealth production are two of them. Here, we introduce a modification to the classical formula ...[more]

PMID: 28405406

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Project description:From the microscopic to the macroscopic level, biological life exhibits directed migration in response to environmental conditions. Chemotaxis enables microbes to sense and move towards nutrient-rich regions or to avoid toxic ones. Socio-economic factors drive human populations from rural to urban areas. The effect of collective movement is especially significant when triggered in response to the generation of public goods. Microbial communities can, for instance, alter their environment through the secretion of extracellular substances. Some substances provide antibiotic-resistance, others provide access to nutrients or promote motility. However, in all cases the maintenance of public goods requires costly cooperation and is consequently susceptible to exploitation. The threat of exploitation becomes even more acute with motile individuals because defectors can avoid the consequences of their cheating. Here, we propose a model to investigate the effects of targeted migration and analyze the interplay between social conflicts and migration in ecological public goods. In particular, individuals can locate attractive regions by moving towards higher cooperator densities or avoid unattractive regions by moving away from defectors. Both migration patterns not only shape an individual's immediate environment but also affects the entire population. For example, defectors hunting cooperators have a homogenizing effect on population densities. This limits the production of the public good and hence inhibits the growth of the population. In contrast, aggregating cooperators promote the spontaneous formation of patterns through heterogeneous density distributions. The positive feedback between cooperator aggregation and public goods production, however, poses analytical and numerical challenges due to its tendency to develop discontinuous distributions. Thus, different modes of directed migration bear the potential to enhance or inhibit the emergence of complex and sometimes dynamic spatial arrangements. Interestingly, whenever patterns emerge, cooperation is promoted, on average, population densities rise, and the risk of extinction is reduced.

Dataset Information

Heterogeneous resource allocation can change social hierarchy in public goods games.

Publications

Heterogeneous resource allocation can change social hierarchy in public goods games.

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