Evidence map›Paper›PMID 30560442›Full record

ArticleBulletin of mathematical biology2019

Generalized Social Dilemmas: The Evolution of Cooperation in Populations with Variable Group Size.

Mark Broom, Karan Pattni, Jan Rychtář

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Bulletin of mathematical biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
8citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

8 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Drivers of cooperation in social dilemmas on higher-order networks.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Mark BroomDepartment of Mathematics, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK. Mark.Broom@city.ac.uk.
Karan PattniDepartment of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Liverpool, Mathematical Sciences Building, Liverpool, L69 7ZL, UK.
Jan RychtářDepartment of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, 27412, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Evolutionary game theory is an important tool to model animal and human behaviour. A key class of games is the social dilemmas, where cooperation benefits the group but defection benefits the individual within any group. Previous works have considered which games qualify as social dilemmas, and different categories of dilemmas, but have generally concentrated on fixed sizes of interacting groups. In this paper, we develop a systematic investigation of social dilemmas on all group sizes. This allows for a richer definition of social dilemmas. For example, while increasing a group size to include another defector is always bad for all existing group members, extra cooperators can be good or bad, depending upon the particular dilemma and group size. We consider a number of commonly used social dilemmas in this context and in particular show the effect of variability in group sizes for the example of a population comprising negative binomially distributed group sizes. The most striking effect is that increasing the variability in group sizes for non-threshold public goods games is favourable for the evolution of cooperation. The situation for threshold public goods games and commons dilemmas is more complex.

Indexed as

Biological EvolutionCooperative BehaviorGame TheoryModels, BiologicalAnimalsHumansMathematical ConceptsPopulation DensityPrisoner DilemmaCooperationEvolutionary gameHawk–Dove gamePrisoner’s DilemmaPublic goods game

Identifiers

PMID30560442
PMCPMC6874626

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.