arXiv · 2604.08840
Modelling the coevolution of opinion dynamics and decision making in social dilemmas
Abstract
This paper proposes a mathematical model for the coevolution of actions and opinions for a population facing a social dilemma. In particular, we assume each person participates in a Public Goods Game (PGG), with their action being to cooperate or defect, and holds an opinion about which action they prefer. We propose a payoff function that combines the PGG with the Friedkin--Johnsen model from opinion dynamics to form a coevolutionary game. According to a discrete-time process, players asynchronously update their actions and opinions, aiming to maximise their individual payoff for the coevolutionary game using myopic best-response. We study the equilibria and provide conditions for the existence of the all-defection and all-cooperation consensus equilibria. We also establish conditions for global convergence to the all-defection equilibrium.
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Ella C. Davidson, Lorenzo Zino, Ming Cao, Mengbin Ye. 2026-04-10. Modelling the coevolution of opinion dynamics and decision making in social dilemmas. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08840
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