The Impact of Group Reputation in Multiagent Environments

This paper presents results from extensive simulation studies on the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Two models were implemented: a nongroup model in order to study fundamental principles of cooperation and a model to imitate ethnocentrism. Some extensions of Axelrod’s elementary model implemented individual reputation. We furthermore introduced group reputation to provide a more realistic scenario. In an environment with group reputation the behavior of one agent will affect the reputation of the whole group and vice-versa. While kind agents (e.g. those with a cooperative behavior) lose reputation when being in a group, in which defective strategies are more common, agents with defective behavior on the other hand benefit from a group with more cooperative strategies. We demonstrate that group reputation decreases cooperation with the in-group and increases cooperation with the out-group.