Changes of behavior tendency in the evolutionary minority game

•We find the changes of behavior tendency in the evolutionary minority game.•A kind of random walk shows similar changes of behavior tendency.•Changes of behavior tendency show a dependence on competition environment.

It is by now well established that the agents change from extreme behavior to confusion when the situation changed from easy time to depression in the evolutionary minority game. However in this letter we explore the dynamics of evolving population with negative values of the reward, and demonstrate that the one-time phase change is a little part. In particular, we show the changes of behavior tendency and reveal the underlying dynamics of the changes.