Emergence of Cooperation in Adaptive Social Networks with Behavioral Diversity

Whether by nature or nurture, humans often respond differently when facing the same situation. Yet, the role of behavioral differences between individuals when immersed in their social network remains largely ignored in most problems of natural and social sciences. Here, we investigate how diversity in the way individuals assess their adverse social partners affects the evolution of cooperation. We resort to evolutionary game theory (EGT) to describe the dynamics of populations in which individuals interact according to an adaptive social network and may respond differently to unwanted social interactions. We show that increasing the number of ways of responding to adverse ties in the population always promotes cooperation. As such, adaptive social dynamics and behavioral differences benefit the entire community even though myopic individuals still act in their own interest. As defectors are wiped out, surviving cooperators maintain the full diversity of behavioral types, providing the means to establish cooperation as a robust evolutionary strategy.