An Alternate Interpretation of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Evolution of Non-Mutual Cooperation

The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD) has been an effective model of social, biological and political interaction for nearly 40 years. In the traditional definition of the game, constraints are provided that limit the cooperation between players to mutual cooperation, i.e. both players deciding to “cooperate” on a single play. This paper demonstrates that by modifying the traditional constraints, successful strategies must embody the ability to coordinate their interactions over several consecutive plays, a much more complex and potentially more interesting behavior. This form of interaction is termed nonmutual cooperation. This paper demonstrate the evolution of non-mutually cooperative agents, represented as Finite State Machines, under two distinct payoff schemes and discusses the implications of these results.