Cooperation in Social Networks: Communication, Trust, and Selflessness

The Army’s myriad social networks connect not only humans and soldiers, but also machines, computers, and robots. And most of the social/biological/physical/informational connections in these networks are in the form of cooperation – entities working together to achieve a common goal. So how does this complex web of relationships, collaborations, and communities of diverse entities work? This paper introduces a new framework in which measures of cooperation can be precisely defined. We demonstrate how the framework can be applied to social networks, and examine the dynamic networks arising in the case of pursuit and evasion games. Finally, we relate the concepts of competitive and altruistic cooperation to trust and the nature of communication within a team.