Catalysing cooperation: the power of collective beliefs in structured populations

Abstract

Collective beliefs can catalyse cooperation in a population of selfish individuals. We study this transformative power of collective beliefs, an effect that intriguingly persists even when beliefs lack moralising components. Besides the process itself, we consider the structure of human populations explicitly. We incorporate the intricate structure of human populations into our model, acknowledging the bias brought by social and cultural identities in interaction networks. Hence, we develop our model by assuming a heterogeneous group size and structured population. We recognise that beliefs, typically complex story systems, might not spontaneously emerge in society, resulting in different spreading rates for actions and beliefs within populations. As the degree of connectedness can vary among individuals perpetuating a belief, we examine the speed of trust build-up in networks with different connection densities. We then scrutinise the timing, speed and dynamics of trust and belief spread across specific network structures, including random Erdös-Rényi networks, scale-free Barabási-Albert networks, and small-world Newman-Watts-Strogatz networks. By comparing these characteristics across various network topologies, we disentangle the effects of structure, group size diversity, and evolutionary dynamics on the evolution of trust and belief.