  Game theory formalizes certain interactions between physical particles or
between living beings in biology, sociology, and economics, and quantifies the
outcomes by payoffs. The prisoner's dilemma (PD) describes situations in which
it is profitable if everybody cooperates rather than defects (free-rides or
cheats), but as cooperation is risky and defection is tempting, the expected
outcome is defection. Nevertheless, some biological and social mechanisms can
support cooperation by effectively transforming the payoffs. Here, we study the
related phase transitions, which can be of first order (discontinous) or of
second order (continuous), implying a variety of different routes to
cooperation. After classifying the transitions into cases of equilibrium
displacement, equilibrium selection, and equilibrium creation, we show that a
transition to cooperation may take place even if the stationary states and the
eigenvalues of the replicator equation for the PD stay unchanged. Our example
is based on adaptive group pressure, which makes the payoffs dependent on the
endogeneous dynamics in the population. The resulting bistability can invert
the expected outcome in favor of cooperation.
