Dynamics of collective cooperation under personalised strategy updates

Abstract Collective cooperation is essential for many social and biological systems, yet understanding how it evolves remains a challenge. Previous investigations report that the ubiquitous heterogeneous individual connections hinder cooperation by assuming individuals update strategies at identical rates. Here we develop a general framework by allowing individuals to update strategies at personalised rates, and provide the precise mathematical condition under which universal cooperation is favoured. Combining analytical and numerical calculations on synthetic and empirical networks, we find that when individuals’ update rates vary inversely with their number of connections, heterogeneous connections actually outperform homogeneous ones in promoting cooperation. This surprising property undercuts the conventional wisdom that heterogeneous structure is generally antagonistic to cooperation and, further helps develop an efficient algorithm OptUpRat to optimise collective cooperation by designing individuals’ update rates in any population structure. Our findings provide a unifying framework to understand the interplay between structural heterogeneity, behavioural rhythms, and cooperation.