Opinion-driven selective interaction promotes cooperation: an evolutionary game approach with discrete multidimensional opinions

Abstract Motivated by the need to uncover how opinion heterogeneity shapes interaction patterns and the emergence of cooperation in social dilemmas, this study investigates the role of opinion-driven mechanisms in evolutionary game dynamics. It integrates discrete, multidimensional opinions into the spatial Prisoner’s Dilemma through an extended Voter model, wherein interaction decisions are governed by opinion dissimilarity, opinion updates follow a payoff-weighted rule, and strategy evolution is driven by Fermi dynamics. Simulation results reveal that lower tolerance for opinion differences significantly promotes cooperation by restricting interactions to like-minded individuals and fostering the formation of homogeneous clusters in which cooperation can emerge and stabilize. These cooperative clusters further enable the co-diffusion of aligned opinions and cooperative strategies across the population. Moreover, contrary to conventional expectations, higher interaction avoidance costs also enhance cooperation by accelerating opinion convergence, thereby strengthening the dominance of cooperative behavior at the population level. From a microscopic perspective, individuals with convergent opinions tend to achieve higher payoffs than those avoiding interactions, and this payoff advantage is amplified as avoidance costs increase, facilitating the spread of cooperation. Overall, the findings demonstrate that opinion-driven selective interaction reshapes evolutionary dynamics and provides new insights into how cognitive factors can promote the emergence and persistence of cooperation in complex systems.