dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaMesoscopic structure conditions the emergence of cooperation on social networks
| Authors | Sergi Lozano, Alex Arenas, Angel Sanchez |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0612124 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612124 |
Abstract
We study the evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma on two social networks obtained from actual relational data. We find very different cooperation levels on each of them that can not be easily understood in terms of global statistical properties of both networks. We claim that the result can be understood at the mesoscopic scale, by studying the community structure of the networks. We explain the dependence of the cooperation level on the temptation parameter in terms of the internal structure of the communities and their interconnections. We then test our results on community-structured, specifically designed artificial networks, finding perfect agreement with the observations in the real networks. Our results support the conclusion that studies of evolutionary games on model networks and their interpretation in terms of global properties may not be sufficient to study specific, real social systems. In addition, the community perspective may be helpful to interpret the origin and behavior of existing networks as well as to design structures that show resilient cooperative behavior.
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"abstract": "We study the evolutionary Prisoner\u0027s Dilemma on two social networks obtained\nfrom actual relational data. We find very different cooperation levels on each\nof them that can not be easily understood in terms of global statistical\nproperties of both networks. We claim that the result can be understood at the\nmesoscopic scale, by studying the community structure of the networks. We\nexplain the dependence of the cooperation level on the temptation parameter in\nterms of the internal structure of the communities and their interconnections.\nWe then test our results on community-structured, specifically designed\nartificial networks, finding perfect agreement with the observations in the\nreal networks. Our results support the conclusion that studies of evolutionary\ngames on model networks and their interpretation in terms of global properties\nmay not be sufficient to study specific, real social systems. In addition, the\ncommunity perspective may be helpful to interpret the origin and behavior of\nexisting networks as well as to design structures that show resilient\ncooperative behavior.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0612124",
"authors": [
"Sergi Lozano",
"Alex Arenas",
"Angel Sanchez"
],
"categories": [
"physics.soc-ph",
"cond-mat.stat-mech",
"math-ph",
"math.GM",
"math.MP",
"nlin.AO",
"physics.comp-ph",
"q-bio.PE"
],
"title": "Mesoscopic structure conditions the emergence of cooperation on social networks",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612124"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
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"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
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