Small group size promotes more egalitarian societies as modeled by the hawk-dove game

The social organization of groups varies greatly across primate species, ranging from egalitarian to despotic. Moreover, the typical or average size of groups varies greatly across primate species. Yet we know little about how group size affects social organization across primate species. Here we us...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2022-12, Vol.17 (12), p.e0279545-e0279545
Main Authors: Lin, Kai-Yin, Schank, Jeffrey C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agent-based models
Aggressiveness
Agrarian society
Animals
Biology and life sciences
Computer and Information Sciences
Cooperation
Costs
Egalitarianism
Evaluation
Evolution
Game Theory
Games
Group size
Hunter-gatherers
Modelling
Mutation
Mutation Rate
Mutation rates
Offspring
Physical Sciences
Research and Analysis Methods
Social organization
Social Sciences
Social systems
Societies
Society
Stone Age
Viscosity
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Summary:The social organization of groups varies greatly across primate species, ranging from egalitarian to despotic. Moreover, the typical or average size of groups varies greatly across primate species. Yet we know little about how group size affects social organization across primate species. Here we used the hawk-dove game (HDG) to model the evolution of social organization as a function of maximum group size and used the evolved frequency of hawks as a measure of egalitarian/despotism in societies. That is, the lower the frequency of hawks, the more egalitarian a society is, and the higher the frequency of hawks, the more despotic it is. To do this, we built an agent-based model in which agents live in groups and play the HDG with fellow group members to obtain resources to reproduce offspring. Offspring inherit the strategy of their parent (hawk or dove) with a low mutation rate. When groups reach a specified maximum size, they are randomly divided into two groups. We show that the evolved frequency of hawks is dramatically lower for relatively small maximum group sizes than predicted analytically for the HDG. We discuss the relevance of group size for understanding and modeling primate social systems, including the transition from hunter-gather societies to agricultural societies of the Neolithic era. We conclude that group size should be included in our theoretical understanding of the organization of primate social systems.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0279545