Social Aggregation as a Cooperative Game

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel social aggregation model based on cooperative game theory, incorporating psychological factors like norms and cultural coordinates, and tests it with simple toy models to analyze cooperation dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a new framework for social aggregation using cooperative game concepts and psychological factors, supported by preliminary toy model simulations.

Findings

Cooperation is most advantageous in large clusters.

Full cooperation is not necessary for a unified megacluster.

The model highlights the role of cluster size in cooperation strategies.

Abstract

A new approach for the description of phenomena of social aggregation is suggested. On the basis of psychological concepts (as for instance social norms and cultural coordinates), we deduce a general mechanism for the social aggregation in which different clusters of individuals can merge according to the cooperation among the agents. In their turn, the agents can cooperate or defect according to the clusters distribution inside the system. The fitness of an individual increases with the size of its cluster, but decreases with the work the individual had to do in order to join it. In order to test the reliability of such new approach, we introduce a couple of simple toy models with the features illustrated above. We see, from this preliminary study, how the cooperation is the most convenient strategy only in presence of very large clusters, while on the other hand it is not necessary to have one hundred percent of cooperators for reaching a totally ordered configuration with only one megacluster filling the whole system.