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Talent and experience shape competitive social hierarchies

Márton Pósfai and Raissa M. D'Souza
Phys. Rev. E 98, 020302(R) – Published 20 August 2018
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Abstract

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.

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  • Received 14 December 2017
  • Revised 5 June 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.98.020302

©2018 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Interdisciplinary PhysicsStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Márton Pósfai*

  • Complexity Sciences Center and Department of Computer Science, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA

Raissa M. D'Souza

  • Complexity Sciences Center, Department of Computer Science and Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA and Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA

  • *posfai@ucdavis.edu

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Issue

Vol. 98, Iss. 2 — August 2018

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