Comprehensive consideration of strategy updating promotes cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma game

• A new method of strategy updating is applied in the prisoner’s dilemma game.
• Stochastic player applies the classical Fermi rule for strategy updating.
• Smart player considers its neighbors’ payoff and environment for strategy updating.
• Results illustrate that the increase of smart players promotes cooperation.

We investigate how the cooperation emerges in the square lattice when individuals play the prisoner’s dilemma game by adopting different strategy updating methods. First, we classify individuals in two classes at the strategy updating stage: stochastic players and smart players. The stochastic players are those who take the classical Fermi rule, while the smart players are those who make comprehensive evaluation for strategy updating. Second, we adopt Dempster–Shafer theory to combine smart players’ evaluations from payoff and environment aspects. Simulation results reveal that the comprehensive strategy updating method has a positive impact on the emergence of cooperation. Furthermore, the number of cooperators increases with the proportion of smart player increase. However, it is noteworthy that defector never become extinct, even all players in the network are smart ones. This is because some smart players would maximize their payoff if they choose to betray their cooperative neighbors. Our work in this paper may provide further understanding of the origin of cooperation in social and biology systems.