Nagi Khalil’s research while affiliated with Rey Juan Carlos University and other places

A network model based on players' aspirations is proposed and analyzed theoretically and numerically within the framework of evolutionary game theory. In this model, players decide whether to cooperate or defect by comparing their payoffs from pairwise games with their neighbors, driven by a common aspiration level. The model also incorporates a degree of irrationality through an effective temperature in the Fermi function. The level of cooperation in the system is fundamentally influenced by two social attributes: satisfaction, defined as the fraction of players whose payoffs exceed the aspiration level, and the degree of rationality in decision-making. Rational players tend to maintain their initial strategies for sufficiently low aspiration levels, while irrational agents promote a state of perfect coexistence, resulting in half of the agents cooperating. The transition between these two behaviors can be critical, often leading to abrupt changes in cooperation levels. When the aspiration level is high, all players become dissatisfied, regardless of the effective temperature. Intermediate aspiration levels result in diverse behaviors, including sudden transitions for rational agents and a non-monotonic relationship between cooperation and increased irrationality. The study also carefully examines the effects of the interaction structure, initial conditions, and the strategy update rule (asynchronous versus synchronous). Special attention is given to the prisoner's dilemma, where significant cooperation levels can be achieved in a structured environment, with moderate aspiration and high rationality settings, and following a synchronous strategy updating scheme.

Cooperation and defection are social traits whose evolutionary origin is still unresolved. Recent behavioral experiments with humans suggested that strategy changes are driven mainly by the individuals' expectations and not by imitation. This work theoretically analyzes and numerically explores an aspiration-driven strategy updating in a well-mixed population playing games. The payoffs of the game matrix and the aspiration are condensed into just two parameters that allow a comprehensive description of the dynamics. We find continuous and abrupt transitions in the cooperation density with excellent agreement between theory and the Gillespie simulations. Under strong selection, the system can display several levels of steady cooperation or get trapped into absorbing states. These states are still relevant for experiments even when irrational choices are made due to their prolonged relaxation times. Finally, we show that for the particular case of the prisoner dilemma, where defection is the dominant strategy under imitation mechanisms, the self-evaluation update instead favors cooperation nonlinearly with the level of aspiration. Thus, our work provides insights into the distinct role between imitation and self-evaluation with no learning dynamics.

Cooperation and defection are social traits whose evolutionary origin is still unresolved. Recent behavioral experiments with humans suggested that strategy changes are driven mainly by the individuals' expectations and not by imitation. This work theoretically analyzes and numerically explores an aspiration-driven strategy updating in a well-mixed population playing games. The payoffs of the game matrix and the aspiration are condensed into just two parameters that allow a comprehensive description of the dynamics. We find continuous and abrupt transitions in the cooperation density with excellent agreement between theory and the Gillespie simulations. Under strong selection, the system can display several levels of steady cooperation or get trapped into absorbing states. These states are still relevant for experiments even when irrational choices are made due to their prolonged relaxation times. Finally, we show that for the particular case of the Prisoner Dilemma, where defection is the dominant strategy under imitation mechanisms, the self-evaluation update instead favors cooperation nonlinearly with the level of aspiration. Thus, our work provides insights into the distinct role between imitation and self-evaluation with no learning dynamics.

Although the cooperative dynamics emerging from a network of interacting players has been exhaustively investigated, it is not yet fully understood when and how network reciprocity drives cooperation transitions. In this work, we investigate the critical behavior of evolutionary social dilemmas on structured populations by using the framework of master equations and Monte Carlo simulations. The developed theory describes the existence of absorbing, quasiabsorbing, and mixed strategy states and the transition nature, continuous or discontinuous, between the states as the parameters of the system change. In particular, when the decision-making process is deterministic, in the limit of zero effective temperature of the Fermi function, we find that the copying probabilities are discontinuous functions of the system's parameters and of the network degrees sequence. This may induce abrupt changes in the final state for any system size, in excellent agreement with the Monte Carlo simulation results. Our analysis also reveals the existence of continuous and discontinuous phase transitions for large systems as the temperature increases, which is explained in the mean-field approximation. Interestingly, for some game parameters, we find optimal “social temperatures” maximizing or minimizing the cooperation frequency or density.

Although the cooperative dynamics emerging from a network of interacting players has been exhaustively investigated, it is not yet fully understood when and how network reciprocity drives cooperation transitions. In this work, we investigate the critical behavior of evolutionary social dilemmas on structured populations by using the framework of master equations and Monte Carlo simulations. The developed theory describes the existence of absorbing, quasi-absorbing, and mixed strategy states and the transition nature, continuous or discontinuous, between the states as the parameters of the system change. In particular, when the decision-making process is deterministic, in the limit of zero effective temperature of the Fermi function, we find that the copying probabilities are discontinuous functions of the system's parameters and of the network degrees sequence. This may induce abrupt changes in the final state for any system size, in excellent agreement with the Monte Carlo simulation results. Our analysis also reveals the existence of continuous and discontinuous phase transitions for large systems as the temperature increases, which is explained in the mean-field approximation. Interestingly, for some game parameters, we find optimal "social temperatures" maximizing/minimizing the cooperation frequency/density.

The past two decades have seen significant successes in our understanding of networked systems, from the mapping of real-world networks to the establishment of generative models recovering their observed macroscopic patterns. These advances, however, are restricted to pairwise interactions and provide limited insight into higher-order structures. Such multi-component interactions can only be grasped through simplicial complexes, which have recently found applications in social, technological, and biological contexts. Here we introduce a model to grow simplicial complexes of order two, i.e., nodes, links, and triangles, that can be straightforwardly extended to structures containing hyperedges of larger order. Specifically, through a combination of preferential and/or nonpreferential attachment mechanisms, the model constructs networks with a scale-free degree distribution and an either bounded or scale-free generalized degree distribution. We arrive at a highly general scheme with analytical control of the scaling exponents to construct ensembles of synthetic complexes displaying desired statistical properties.

The past two decades have seen significant successes in our understanding of networked systems, from the mapping of real-world networks to the establishment of generative models recovering their observed macroscopic patterns. These advances, however, are restricted to pairwise interactions and provide limited insight into higher-order structures. Such multi-component interactions can only be grasped through simplicial complexes, which have recently found applications in social, technological and biological contexts. Here we introduce, study, and characterize a model to grow simplicial complexes of order two, i.e. nodes, links and triangles. Specifically, through a combination of preferential and/or non preferential attachment mechanisms, the model constructs networks with a scale-free degree distribution and an either bounded or scale-free generalized degree distribution. Allowing to analytically control the scaling exponents we arrive at a highly general scheme by which one is able to construct ensembles of synthetic complexes displaying desired statistical properties.

The past two decades have seen significant successes in our understanding of complex networked systems, from the mapping of real-world social, biological and technological networks to the establishment of generative models recovering their observed macroscopic patterns. These advances, however, are restricted to pairwise interactions, captured by dyadic links, and provide limited insight into higher-order structure, in which a group of several components represents the basic interaction unit. Such multi-component interactions can only be grasped through simplicial complexes, which have recently found applications in social and biological contexts, as well as in engineering and brain science. What, then, are the generative models recovering the patterns observed in real-world simplicial complexes? Here we introduce, study, and characterize a model to grow simplicial complexes of order two, i.e. nodes, links and triangles, that yields a highly flexible range of empirically relevant simplicial network ensembles. Specifically, through a combination of preferential and/or non preferential attachment mechanisms, the model constructs networks with a scale-free degree distribution and an either bounded or scale-free generalized degree distribution - the latter accounting for the number of triads surrounding each link. Allowing to analytically control the scaling exponents we arrive at a highly general scheme by which to construct ensembles of synthetic complexes displaying desired statistical properties.