Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 26
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2012-31030-2

Regular Article

Towards the role of social connectivity and aspiration level on evolutionary game

Adaptive Networks and Control Laboratory, Electronic Engineering Department, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, P.R. China

^a e-mail: lix@fudan.edu.cn

Received: 18 August 2012
Received in final form: 11 November 2012
Published online: 28 January 2013

Abstract

Investigating the evolutionary game dynamics in structured populations is challenging due to the complexity of social interactions. There has been a growing interest in evolutionary game on social networks, particularly concerning how a specific network structure affects the evolution of strategies. Here, we consider a social network of interacting individuals playing the anti-coordination games with mixed strategies, and present a deterministic nonlinear equation for the evolution of strategies where the aspiration level is an incentive in the selection of strategies. We find that with an intermediate aspiration level, there exists an evolutionarily-stable mixed-strategy equilibrium if the cost-to-benefit ratio of altruistic is chosen below a threshold, which is determined by the largest Laplacian eigenvalue of the network. We also give extensive numerical simulations on regular and scale-free networks which confirm the validity of our analytical findings.