Evolution of Trust in Anonymous Interactions

Abstract

For many applications, the success of multiagent systems depends on cooperation among the participating agents. Autonomous entities often face the economic and social dilemma of whether to act in trustworthy manner. Reputation mechanisms and institutional norms are currently used to make an individual agent responsible for its actions. It is challenging to achieve trust in an anonymous setting. We consider the problem of trust with respect to fairness, especially in an anonymous setting. Decision mechanisms should be built into agents to yield trustworthy behavior. We study conditions under which such cooperation can evolve. Our simulations show that small group interactions make it favorable for fairness to emerge. Techniques such as tagging can generate behavior analogous to small groups.