The evolution of taking roles

•Is it possible for a social structure to evolve if adopting social positions is costless?.•There is a crucial difference between anti-coordination and conflict games.•Non-trivial hierarchical social structures can only emerge in anti-coordination games.•Egalitarian social structures can emerge in b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of economic behavior & organization 2020-06, Vol.174, p.38-63
Main Authors: Herold, Florian, Kuzmics, Christoph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Evolution
Hawk-Dove Games
Roles
Social Structure
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Summary:•Is it possible for a social structure to evolve if adopting social positions is costless?.•There is a crucial difference between anti-coordination and conflict games.•Non-trivial hierarchical social structures can only emerge in anti-coordination games.•Egalitarian social structures can emerge in both, but are more fragile in conflict games. Individuals are randomly matched to play an ex-ante symmetric hawk-dove game. Individuals assume one of a finite set of observable labels and condition their action choice on their opponent’s label. We study the evolutionary stability of chosen labels and their social interaction structure. Evolutionarily stable social structures differ for games in which a dove player prefers the opponent to play hawk (anti-coordination games), and those in which everyone prefers their opponent to play dove (conflict games). Non-trivial hierarchical social structures can only emerge in anti-coordination games. Egalitarian social structures can emerge in both, but are more fragile in conflict games.
ISSN:0167-2681
1879-1751
DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2020.03.014