Reputation drives cooperative behaviour and network formation in human groups

• DOI: 10.1038/srep07843
• Publication Date: 2015-01-19T10:07:13Z
• Authors: Jose A. Cuesta; Carlos Gracia-Lázaro; Alfredo Ferrer; Yamir Moreno; Angel Sánchez
• Keywords: Cooperativeness; Reciprocity; Collective Action

Cooperativeness is a defining feature of human nature. Theoreticians have suggested several mechanisms to explain this ubiquitous phenomenon, including reciprocity, reputation and punishment, but the problem still unsolved. Here we show, through experiments conducted with groups people playing an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma on dynamic network, that it what really fosters cooperation. While mechanism has already been observed in unstructured populations, find acts equally when interactions are given by network players can reconfigure dynamically. Furthermore, our observations reveal memory also drives formation process cooperators assort more, longer link lifetimes, past actions record. Our analysis demonstrates, for first time, be very well quantified as weighted mean fractions cooperative last action performed. This finding potential applications collaborative systems e-commerce.