Transition from Gaussian to Levy distributions of stochastic payoff variations in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game.

We study the impact of stochastic payoff variations with different distributions on the evolution of cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game. We find that Gaussian-distributed payoff variations are most successful in promoting cooperation irrespective of the temptation to defect. In particular, the facilitative effect of noise on the evolution of cooperation decreases steadily as the frequency of rare events increases. Findings are explained via an analysis of local payoff ranking violations. The relevance of results for economics and sociology is discussed.