Cooperative behaviour constitutes a key aspect of both human society and non-human animal systems, but explaining how cooperation evolves represents a major scientific challenge. It is now well established that social network structure plays a central role for the viability of cooperation. However, not much is known about the importance of the positions of cooperators in the networks for the evolution of cooperation. Here, we investigate how cooperation is affected by correlations between cooperativeness and individual social connectedness. Using simulation models, we find that the effect of correlation between cooperativeness and connectedness (degree) depends on the social network structure, with positive effect in standard scale-free networks and no effect in standard Poisson networks. Furthermore, when degree assortativity is increased such that individuals cluster with others of similar social connectedness, we find that bridge areas between social clusters can act as barriers to the spread of defection, leading to strong enhancement of cooperation in particular in Poisson networks. But this effect is sensitive to the presence of Trojan horses (defectors placed within cooperator clusters). The study provides new knowledge about the conditions under which cooperation may evolve and persist, and the results are also relevant to consider in regard to human cooperation experiments.
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