Evolutionary accumulated temptation game on small world networks

The temptation in the traditional prisoner's dilemma is constant. To explore the evolution of temptations, the accumulated temptation game is proposed, where the temporal temptation is of heterogeneity among agents according to historical strategies. Agents accumulate the temptations by cooperation but consume the temptation by defection. The accumulation factor is introduced to measure the amplitude of the variation of temptations. During the evolutionary process, the density of cooperators and the average temptation may move towards the same direction. Cooperative behaviors will be eliminated if the accumulation factor is large enough. As an interesting result, a fraction of agents may keep cooperation constantly for accumulating temptations and they instantaneously defect at a certain time. The higher accumulation factor accelerates the instantaneous defection of agents. The completely random networks play an essential role in motivating cooperation when the temptation is small. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.