Information sharing promotes prosocial behaviour

More often than not, bad decisions are bad regardless of where and when they are made. Information sharing might thus be utilized to mitigate them. Here we show that sharing information about strategy choice between players residing on two different networks reinforces the evolution of cooperation. In evolutionary games, the strategy reflects the action of each individual that warrants the highest utility in a competitive setting. We therefore assume that identical strategies on the two networks reinforce themselves by lessening their propensity to change. Besides network reciprocity working in favour of cooperation on each individual network, we observe the spontaneous emergence of correlated behaviour between the two networks, which further deters defection. If information is shared not just between individuals but also between groups, the positive effect is even stronger, and this despite the fact that information sharing is implemented without any assumptions with regard to content. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. New Journal of Physics 15 (2013) 05301