Károly Takács

Structural Embeddedness and Intergroup Conflict

Social structure affects the likelihood of group conflicts, although it has been disregarded by previous explanations. This study extends the intergroup public goods game model and integrates the influence of structural embeddedness and social incentives in the analysis of harmful group conflict. The integrated model explains why intergroup conflicts are often promoted by segregation and describes conditions under which this effect does not occur. The model predicts that a relationship between segregation and the likelihood of conflict can be characterized by an S-shape function. The segregation effect is stronger if local selective incentives are relatively important compared to confirmation from neighbors. Results show that under certain structural conditions, rational individuals are more likely to be trapped in harmful conflict than less rational actors, and rigid assumptions about individual rationality strengthen the effect of clustering on intergroup conflict.

Discrepancy and Disliking Do Not Induce Negative Opinion Shifts.

Both classical social psychological theories and recent formal models of opinion differentiation and bi-polarization assign a prominent role to negative social influence. Negative influence is defined as shifts away from the opinion of others and hypothesized to be induced by discrepancy with or disliking of the source of influence. There is strong empirical support for the presence of positive social influence (a shift towards the opinion of others), but evidence that large opinion differences or disliking could trigger negative shifts is mixed. We examine positive and negative influence with controlled exposure to opinions of other individuals in one experiment and with opinion exchange in another study. Results confirm that similarities induce attraction, but results do not support that discrepancy or disliking entails negative influence. Instead, our findings suggest a robust positive linear relationship between opinion distance and opinion shifts.

The paradox of cooperation benefits

It seems obvious that as the benefits of cooperation increase, the share of cooperators in the population should also increase. It is well known that positive assortment between cooperative types, for instance in spatially structured populations, provide better conditions for the evolution of cooperation than complete mixing. This study demonstrates that, assuming positive assortment, under most conditions higher cooperation benefits also increase the share of cooperators. On the other hand, under a specified range of payoff values, when at least two payoff parameters are modified, the reverse is true. The conditions for this paradox are determined for two-person social dilemmas: the Prisoners Dilemma, the Hawks and Doves game, and the Stag Hunt game, assuming global selection and positive assortment.

EMOTIONAL STRATEGIES AS CATALYSTS FOR COOPERATION IN SIGNED NETWORKS

The evolution of unconditional cooperation is one of the fundamental problems in science. A new solution is proposed to solve this puzzle. We treat this issue with an evolutionary model in which agents play the Prisoners Dilemma on signed networks. The topology is allowed to co-evolve with relational signs as well as with agent strategies. We introduce a strategy that is conditional on the emotional content embedded in network signs. We show that this strategy acts as a catalyst and creates favorable conditions for the spread of unconditional cooperation. In line with the literature, we found evidence that the evolution of cooperation most likely occurs in networks with relatively high chances of rewiring and with low likelihood of strategy adoption. While a low likelihood of rewiring enhances cooperation, a very high likelihood seems to limit its diffusion. Furthermore, unlike in nonsigned networks, cooperation becomes more prevalent in denser topologies.

The miracle of peer review and development in science: an agent-based model

It is not easy to rationalize how peer review, as the current grassroots of science, can work based on voluntary contributions of reviewers. There is no rationale to write impartial and thorough evaluations. If reviewers are unmotivated to carefully select high quality contributions, there is no risk in submitting low-quality work by authors. As a result, scientists face a social dilemma: if everyone acts according to his or her own self-interest, the outcome is low scientific quality. We examine how the increased relevance of public good benefits (journal impact factor), the editorial policy of handling incoming reviews, and the acceptance decisions that take into account reputational information, can help the evolution of high-quality contributions from authors. High effort from the side of reviewers is problematic even if authors cooperate: reviewers are still best off by producing low-quality reviews, which does not hinder scientific development, just adds random noise and unnecessary costs to it. We show with agent-based simulations why certain self-emerged current practices, such as the increased reliance on journal metrics and the reputation bias in acceptance, work efficiently for scientific development. Our results find no proper guidelines, however, how the system of voluntary peer review with impartial and thorough evaluations could be sustainable jointly with rapid scientific development.

Status Perceptions Matter: Understanding Disliking Among Adolescents

The emergence of disliking relations depends on how adolescents perceive the relative informal status of their peers. This phenomenon is examined on a longitudinal sample using dynamic network analysis (585 students across 16 classes in five schools). As hypothesized, individuals dislike those who they look down on (disdain), and conform to others by disliking those who they perceive as being looked down on by their peers (conformity). The inconsistency between status perceptions also leads to disliking, when individuals do not look up to those who they perceive to be admired by peers (frustration). Adolescents are not more likely to dislike those who they look up to (admiration). The results demonstrate the role of status perceptions on disliking tie formation.

Status Characteristics and Ability Attributions in Hungarian School Classes An Exponential Random Graph Approach

We study how the status characteristics gender and ethnicity affect the abilities that adolescents attribute to each other in the Hungarian school context. For this, we derive predictions from status characteristics theory that we test by applying exponential random graph models to data collected among students in 27 school classes. By that, we contribute to the few existing studies of status characteristics in a school context, and we propose a novel approach to handle structural dependencies between individual ability attributions. Our results suggest that across classes, gender does not consistently affect ability attributions, while ethnicity does affect ability attributions. Roma students are on average perceived as less able than their Hungarian peers, even after controlling for the structural embeddedness of these perceptions.

Intermediaries in Trust: Indirect Reciprocity, Incentives, and Norms

Any trust situation involves a certain amount of risk for trustors that trustees could abuse. In some cases, intermediaries exist who play a crucial role in the exchange by providing reputational information. To examine under what conditions intermediary opinion could have a positive impact on cooperation, we designed two experiments based on a modified version of the investment game where intermediaries rated the behaviour of trustees under various incentive schemes and different role structures. We found that intermediaries can increase trust if there is room for indirect reciprocity between the involved parties. We also found that the effect of monetary incentives and social norms cannot be clearly separable in these situations. If properly designed, monetary incentives for intermediaries can have a positive effect. On the one hand, when intermediary rewards are aligned with the trustor’s interest, investments and returns tend to increase. On the other hand, fixed monetary incentives perform less than any other incentive schemes and endogenous social norms in ensuring trust and fairness. These findings should make us reconsider the mantra of incentivization of social and public conventional policy.

Parallel versus Sequential Update and the Evolution of Cooperation with the Assistance of Emotional Strategies

Our study contributes to the debate on the evolution of cooperation in the single-shot Prisoners Dilemma (PD) played on networks. We construct a model in which individuals are connected with positive and negative ties. Some agents play sign-dependent strategies that use the sign of the relation as a shorthand for determining appropriate action toward the opponent. In the context of our model in which network topology, agent strategic types and relational signs coevolve, the presence of sign-dependent strategies catalyzes the evolution of cooperation. We highlight how the success of cooperation depends on a crucial aspect of implementation: whether we apply parallel or sequential strategy update. Parallel updating, with averaging of payoffs across interactions in the social neighborhood, supports cooperation in a much wider set of parameter values than sequential updating. Our results cast doubts about the realism and generalizability of models that claim to explain the evolution of cooperation but implicitly assume parallel updating.

Referrals and information flow in networks increase discrimination: A laboratory experiment

Abstract Referrals and information flow distort market mechanisms of hiring in the labor market, but they might assist employers under asymmetric information in finding better alternatives. This paper investigates whether an impartial information flow between employers in a cyclic network structure could generate more discrimination than when no information is exchanged between employers. We set up an artificial labor market in which there was no average quality difference between two categories of workers. We asked participants to play the role of employers and examined the partiality of their hiring choices. Results showed that discrimination was prevalent in all conditions. Higher standards by the employers for the quality of workers increased discrimination as did the presence of referrals from workers. Unexpectedly, impartial information flow in a cyclic network of employers did not help to decrease discrimination. We also showed that these mechanisms interact with and subdue each other in complex ways.