TY - JOUR
T1 - Talent and experience shape competitive social hierarchies
AU - Pósfai, Márton
AU - D'Souza, Raissa M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 American Physical Society.
PY - 2018/8/20
Y1 - 2018/8/20
N2 - The hierarchy of social organization is a ubiquitous property of animal and human groups, linked to resource allocation, collective decisions, individual health, and even to social instability. Experimental evidence shows that both the intrinsic abilities of individuals and social reinforcement processes impact hierarchies; existing mathematical models, however, focus on the latter. Here, we develop a rigorous model that incorporates both features and explore their synergistic effect on stability and the structure of hierarchy. For pairwise interactions, we show that there is a trade-off between relationship stability and having the most talented individuals in the highest ranks. Extending this to open societies, where individuals enter and leave the population, we show that important societal effects arise from the interaction between talent and social processes: (i) Despite a positive global correlation between talent and rank, paradoxically, local correlation is negative, and (ii) the removal of an individual can induce a series of rank reversals. We show that the mechanism underlying the latter is the removal of an older individual of limited talent, who nonetheless was able to suppress the rise of younger, more talented individuals.
AB - The hierarchy of social organization is a ubiquitous property of animal and human groups, linked to resource allocation, collective decisions, individual health, and even to social instability. Experimental evidence shows that both the intrinsic abilities of individuals and social reinforcement processes impact hierarchies; existing mathematical models, however, focus on the latter. Here, we develop a rigorous model that incorporates both features and explore their synergistic effect on stability and the structure of hierarchy. For pairwise interactions, we show that there is a trade-off between relationship stability and having the most talented individuals in the highest ranks. Extending this to open societies, where individuals enter and leave the population, we show that important societal effects arise from the interaction between talent and social processes: (i) Despite a positive global correlation between talent and rank, paradoxically, local correlation is negative, and (ii) the removal of an individual can induce a series of rank reversals. We show that the mechanism underlying the latter is the removal of an older individual of limited talent, who nonetheless was able to suppress the rise of younger, more talented individuals.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85052406689&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevE.98.020302
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevE.98.020302
M3 - Article
C2 - 30253624
AN - SCOPUS:85052406689
SN - 2470-0045
VL - 98
JO - Physical Review E - Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics
JF - Physical Review E - Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics
IS - 2
M1 - 020302
ER -