Self-organization and time-stability of social hierarchies.

ABSTRACT: The formation and stability of social hierarchies is a question of general relevance. Here, we propose a simple generalized theoretical model for establishing social hierarchy via pair-wise interactions between individuals and investigate its stability. In each interaction or fight, the probability of "winning" depends solely on the relative societal status of the participants, and the winner has a gain of status whereas there is an equal loss to the loser. The interactions are characterized by two parameters. The first parameter represents how much can be lost, and the second parameter represents the degree to which even a small difference of status can guarantee a win for the higher-status individual. Depending on the parameters, the resulting status distributions reach either a continuo

SUBMITTER: Hickey J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6350989 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature