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Quantifying the Role of Homophily in Human Cooperation Using Multiplex Evolutionary Game Theory.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Di Stefano, Alessandro  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4905-3309
Scatà, Marialisa 
La Corte, Aurelio 
Liò, Pietro 
Catania, Emanuele 

Abstract

Nature shows as human beings live and grow inside social structures. This assumption allows us to explain and explore how it may shape most of our behaviours and choices, and why we are not just blindly driven by instincts: our decisions are based on more complex cognitive reasons, based on our connectedness on different spaces. Thus, human cooperation emerges from this complex nature of social network. Our paper, focusing on the evolutionary dynamics, is intended to explore how and why it happens, and what kind of impact is caused by homophily among people. We investigate the evolution of human cooperation using evolutionary game theory on multiplex. Multiplexity, as an extra dimension of analysis, allows us to unveil the hidden dynamics and observe non-trivial patterns within a population across network layers. More importantly, we find a striking role of homophily, as the higher the homophily between individuals, the quicker is the convergence towards cooperation in the social dilemma. The simulation results, conducted both macroscopically and microscopically across the network layers in the multiplex, show quantitatively the role of homophily in human cooperation.

Description

Keywords

Algorithms, Biological Evolution, Cooperative Behavior, Game Theory, Humans, Instinct, Interpersonal Relations, Models, Biological, Social Support

Journal Title

PLoS One

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1932-6203
1932-6203

Volume Title

10

Publisher

Public Library of Science (PLoS)