Effects of diverse inertia on scale-free–networked prisoner's dilemma games

¹ Department of Modern Physics and Nonlinear Science Center, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei 230026, China
² Department of Automation, Donghua University - Shanghai 201620, China
³ Research Center for Complex System Science, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and Shanghai Academy of System Science - Shanghai 200093, China

^a runran@mail.ustc.edu.cn
^b bhwang@ustc.edu.cn

Received: 2 May 2010
Accepted: 6 July 2010

Abstract

We study an evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game on a scale-free network by a modified Fermi updating rule, where each player is assigned an inertia index that controls its learning activity. An interesting finding is that the cooperation level can be significantly improved when the individual inertia is introduced. More importantly, a parameter β is also introduced to control the diversity level of inertia among the individuals. It is found that there exists an optimal value of β leading to the highest cooperation level. The observed results are explained by the feedback mechanism and the characteristic of the Fermi function. Our analysis also reveals that the players with moderate degrees play a critical role in the evolution of the whole system.