Effects of Stubborn Players and Noise on the Evolution of Cooperation in Spatial Prisoner's Dilemma Game

Abstract

The question of whether a minority of extremists can dominate the collective behavior in social dilemmas is crucial for understanding the evolution of cooperation in both human societies and animal worlds. We establish a spatial prisoner's dilemma game model consisting of both stubborn cooperators and stubborn defectors who never change their behavior. The results reveal that a minority of stubborn players can effectively inhibit the evolution of cooperation. By introducing noise faced by stubborn players, however, we find that the inhibition of cooperation by the stubborn players can be easily canceled by the noise, which suggests a reasonable method for undermining the detrimental effects induced by extremists.

Keywords: Spatial prisoner's dilemma game, Stubborn player, Spatial reciprocity