Self-Organized Segregation within an Evolving Population

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in evolving populations, agents tend to self-segregate into opposing groups with extreme behaviors, while cautious agents perform poorly and become rare, highlighting emergent social dynamics.

Contribution

It reveals how simple adaptive rules lead to self-organized segregation and the decline of cautious agents in evolving populations.

Findings

Agents self-segregate into opposing groups with extreme behaviors

Cautious agents perform poorly and tend to become rare

Emergent social dynamics from adaptive decision-making

Abstract

An evolving population, in which individual members (`agents') adapt their behaviour according to past experience, is of central importance to many disciplines. Because of their limited knowledge and capabilities, agents are forced to make decisions based on inductive, rather than deductive, thinking. We show that a population of competing agents with similar capabilities and knowledge will tend to self-segregate into opposing groups characterized by extreme behavior. Cautious agents perform poorly and tend to become rare.