Impact of strategy-neutral rewarding on the evolution of cooperative behavior

Social rewarding is a common but significant mechanism that promotes the evolution of cooperation. However, besides social rewarding, antisocial rewarding is also ordinary. Thus, we study the evolution of cooperation on prison dilemma game with strategy-neutral rewarding, namely a mechanism including social and antisocial rewarding. Two additional strategies, rewarding cooperators (RC) and rewarding defectors (RD), which establish union-like support to aid akin players are introduced. We show that the new mechanism greatly promotes the evolution of cooperation even in the presence of antisocial rewarding. The rewarding cooperators can enjoy both the benefits of their prosocial contributions and the corresponding rewards, thus they can form cooperative clusters to resist the aggression of defectors. On the other hand, due to their inherent greedy, rewarding defectors fail to secure a sustainable future. Our research might provide valuable insights into further exploring the nature of cooperation in the real world.