The emergence of cooperation in the random asynchronous prisoner's dilemma

The iterated prisoners dilemma (IPD) is a simple model for the study of the emergence of cooperative behavior in populations of selfish individuals. In this work, we challenge the assumption that players move in synchrony, and develop a general Markovian model that allows the study of a wide spectrum of scenarios. Simulations show that the relative timing of player moves, and the reward for mutual cooperation, influences the strategy that eventually dominates the final population. For a synchronous environment, reciprocal behavior appears to be the key to the evolution of cooperation, while in an asynchronous environment, guarded generosity may be a route to the evolution of cooperation. © 2008 International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (ISAROB).