Aspiration dynamics in finite populations

What is it about?

We explore how aspiration-driven strategy-update dynamics under imperfect rationality influence the average abundance of a strategy in multi-player evolutionary games in well-mixed populations. We analytically derive a condition under which a strategy is more abundant than the other in the weak selection limiting case. The condition turns out to differ from that of a wide class of imitation dynamics, as long as the game is not dyadic. This highlights their intrinsic difference.

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Why is it important?

To most evolutionary game dynamics in finite populations, the well-mixed case serves as a benchmark. While aspiration dynamics has been intensively studied in structured populations via computer simulations, it is far less well understood in this unstructured population counterpart. We tackle this question analytically and show its characteristics. It suggests that previously obtained simulation results on graph-structured populations may still hold without the introduction of network structure.