Enhancement of cooperation through conformity-driven reproductive ability

Abstract

We propose a conformity-driven reproductive ability in which an individual $i$ is more (less) likely to imitate a neighbor $j$'s strategy if $j$'s strategy is majority (minority) in $i$'s neighborhood. The results on the evolutionary spatial prisoner's dilemma game show that, compared to homogeneous reproductive ability, conformity-driven reproductive ability can greatly enhance cooperation. This finding is robust with respect to different types of network structures (including square lattice and scale-free network) and to different ways of strategy updating (including synchronous and asynchronous strategy updating).