Emergence of Leadership in Communication

TL;DR

This paper presents a neuro-inspired model demonstrating how different leadership structures emerge in agent networks through interaction dynamics, reflecting societal and natural leadership scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model that reproduces various leadership patterns and analyzes how agent behavior rules influence leadership emergence.

Findings

Reproduces laissez-faire, participative, and autocratic leadership scenarios.

Identifies hidden and successive leadership phenomena.

Shows influence of agent inertia on leadership formation.

Abstract

We study a neuro-inspired model that mimics a discussion (or information dissemination) process in a network of agents. During their interaction, agents redistribute activity and network weights, resulting in emergence of leader(s). The model is able to reproduce the basic scenarios of leadership known in nature and society: laissez-faire (irregular activity, weak leadership, sizable inter-follower interaction, autonomous sub-leaders); participative or democratic (strong leadership, but with feedback from followers); and autocratic (no feedback, one-way influence). Several pertinent aspects of these scenarios are found as well---e.g., hidden leadership (a hidden clique of agents driving the official autocratic leader), and successive leadership (two leaders influence followers by turns). We study how these scenarios emerge from inter-agent dynamics and how they depend on behavior rules of agents---in particular, on their inertia against state changes.