Asymmetric population promotes and jeopardizes cooperation in spatial prisoner’s dilemma game

The evolution of cooperation in asymmetric populations has recently garnered widespread attention. In this study, we propose a new asymmetric model to explore the impact of asymmetric behavior on cooperation evolution. Our model assumes that weak players are always forced to cooperate when interacting with strong players, while strong players always receive the temptation payoff. When encountering peers from the same category, players engage in a prisoner’s dilemma game, differing only in the intensity of the dilemma between population categories. Results suggest that in scenarios where traditional network reciprocity can support cooperation, asymmetric interactions between strong and weak players undermine this reciprocity and jeopardize the maintenance of cooperation. Conversely, in scenarios where traditional network reciprocity fails to support cooperation, asymmetric interactions enable strong players to leverage weak cooperative clusters to establish cooperation. However, as the prevalence of asymmetric interactions increases, it becomes detrimental to cooperation within the weak player subgroups, thus undermining overall cooperation. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how asymmetry impacts cooperation.