Lying on networks: The role of structure and topology in promoting honesty
25 Feb 2020
•
Capraro Valerio
•
Perc Matjaz
•
Vilone Daniele
Lies can have a negating impact on governments, companies, and the society as
a whole. Understanding the dynamics of lying is therefore of crucial importance
across different fields of research...While lying has been studied before in
well-mixed populations, it is a fact that real interactions are rarely
well-mixed. Indeed, they are usually structured and thus best described by
networks. Here we therefore use the Monte Carlo method to study the evolution
of lying in the sender-receiver game in a one-parameter family of networks,
systematically covering complete networks, small-world networks, and
one-dimensional rings. We show that lies which benefit the sender at a cost to
the receiver, the so-called black lies, are less likely to proliferate on
networks than they do in well-mixed populations. Honesty is thus more likely to
evolve, but only when the benefit for the sender is smaller than the cost for
the receiver. Moreover, this effect is particularly strong in small-world
networks, but less so in the one-dimensional ring. For lies that favor the
receiver at a cost to the sender, the so-called altruistic white lies, we show
that honesty is also more likely to evolve than it is in well-mixed
populations. But contrary to black lies, this effect is more expressed in the
one-dimensional ring, whereas in small-world networks it is present only when
the cost to the sender is greater than the benefit for the receiver. Lastly,
for lies that benefit both the sender and the receiver, the so-called Pareto
white lies, we show that the network structure actually favors the evolution of
lying, but this only when the benefit for the sender is slightly greater than
the benefit for the receiver. In this case again the small-world topology acts
as an amplifier of the effect, while other network topologies fail to do the
same.(read more)