Indirect reciprocity with assessments of group reputation

Indirect reciprocity unveils how social cooperation is founded upon moral systems. Under the frame of dyadic games based on individual reputations, the "leading-eight" social norms distinguish themselves in promoting and sustaining cooperation. However, in real societies, people constantly interact within larger groups. They are assessed not only by their own behaviors, but also the reputations of the groups they come from and interact with. Here, we study indirect reciprocity in public goods games with group reputations. We show that varying criteria of group reputation assessment destabilize the consensus within leading-eight populations. We find the presence of an optimal, moderately set social assessment criterion that is most conductive to promoting cooperation. As the payoff of group cooperation increases, the assessment criterion evolves to relaxation following two dynamical patterns, indicating that social prosperity encourages people to be tolerate. Our work identifies the role of group reputation assessment to boost cooperation in social populations.