Understanding how cooperative behaviours can emerge from competitive interactions is an open problem in biology and social sciences. While interactions are usually modelled as pairwise networks, the units of many real-world systems can also interact in groups of three or more. Here, we introduce a general framework to extend pairwise games to higher-order networks. By studying social dilemmas on hypergraphs with a tunable structure, we find an explosive transition to cooperation triggered by a critical number of higher-order games. The associated bistable regime implies that an initial critical mass of cooperators is also required for the emergence of prosocial behavior. Our results show that higher-order interactions provide a novel explanation for the survival of cooperation.
翻译:理解如何从竞争性互动中出现合作行为是生物学和社会科学中的一个悬而未决的问题。虽然互动通常用成对的网络模型化,但许多现实世界的系统单位也可以在三个或更多的群体中相互作用。在此,我们介绍了一个将成对游戏扩展到高阶网络的通用框架。通过研究具有可调结构的超图上的社会困境,我们发现合作的爆炸性转变是由关键数量的高阶游戏触发的。相关的双稳态区域意味着也需要初步的关键的合作者,这是出现亲社会行为的必要条件。我们的结果表明,高阶交互为合作的存活提供了一种新的解释。