The evolution of cooperation in mixed games

Cooperation has been studied in the context of game evolutionary theory by assuming that individuals play always the same game. Here we consider a mixture of two games G(1) and G(2). In each interaction of two individuals, they can play the games G(1) or G(2) with probabilities w and 1 - w, respectively. We define the evolutionary model and study the cooperation evolution in a well-mixed population and in a cycle. We show that in the well-mixed population the evolution is equivalent to the evolution given by the average game. In a cycle, we show that the intensity of selection plays an important role in the promotion or inhibition of cooperation, depending on the games that are mixed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.