Reputation-Based Conditional Interaction Supports Cooperation in Well-Mixed Prisoner’s Dilemmas

In the well-mixed prisoner’s dilemma game, individuals are typically assumed to have no choice about whether to interact with other individuals in the population. In this paper, we instead consider reputation-based conditional interaction and its consequences for the evolution of cooperation. Each individual has a tolerance range, and only interacts with other individuals whose reputation lies within its tolerance range in a chosen sample of the population. Reputation contains information about the number of interaction partners an individual has just cooperated with. We find that the introduction of conditional interaction promotes cooperation in well-mixed populations, and there exist moderate tolerance ranges for which this effect is maximized. For a given tolerance range, there is a critical cost-to-benefit ratio below which cooperation can be promoted. Interestingly, we find that if cooperation evolves, different cooperators’ interaction clusters are typically maintained in the population, each around a different reputation level. We further investigate some properties of these cooperators’ clusters. Moreover, we examine the effects of the sample number on the evolution of cooperation. Our results highlight the importance of the detailed consideration of modes of interaction for the evolution of cooperation in well-mixed populations.