Imitating emotions instead of strategies in spatial games elevates social welfare

¹ Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science - P.O. Box 49, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary, EU
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Anhui University of Technology - Maanshan City 243002, China
³ Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor - Koroška cesta 160, SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia, EU

^a szolnoki@mfa.kfki.hu

Received: 3 August 2011
Accepted: 7 September 2011

Abstract

The success of imitation as an evolutionary driving force in spatial games has often been questioned, especially for social dilemmas such as the snowdrift game, where the most profitable one may be the mixed phase sustaining both the cooperative and the defective strategy. Here we reexamine this assumption by investigating the evolution of cooperation in spatial social-dilemma games, where, instead of pure strategies, players can adopt emotional profiles of their neighbors. For simplicity, the emotional profile of each player is determined by two pivotal factors only, namely how it behaves towards less and how towards more successful neighbors. We find that imitating emotions such as goodwill and envy instead of pure strategies from the more successful players reestablishes imitation as a tour de force for resolving social dilemmas on structured populations without any additional assumptions or strategic complexity.