Imitation dynamics on networks with incomplete information

Abstract Imitation is an important learning heuristic in animal and human societies. Previous explorations report that the fate of individuals with cooperative strategies is sensitive to the protocol of imitation, leading to a conundrum about how different styles of imitation quantitatively impact the evolution of cooperation. Here, we take a different perspective on the personal and external social information required by imitation. We develop a general model of imitation dynamics with incomplete information in networked systems, which unifies classical update rules including the death-birth and pairwise-comparison rule on complex networks. Under pairwise interactions, we find that collective cooperation is most promoted if individuals neglect personal information. If personal information is considered, cooperators evolve more readily with more external information. Intriguingly, when interactions take place in groups on networks with low degrees of clustering, using more personal and less external information better facilitates cooperation. Our unifying perspective uncovers intuition by examining the rate and range of competition induced by different information situations.