The Biased Interaction Game: A System Theoretic Approach to the Emergence of Inequality, Hierarchy, and the Implications for the Likelihood of Cooperation

The emergence of cooperation in natural selection has been successfully studied using game theory and, despite the underlying selfish nature of the evolutionary process, a spectrum of plausible mechanisms have been proposed to determine the conditions under which cooperative behaviour is likely to occur. Past work has shown that factors such as kin relatedness, proximity, group association and reputation influence the likelihood of cooperation, and a game theoretic approach has been used to define their primary mechanisms. Here, we consider two novel unexplored factors that play a role in determining the likelihood of cooperation occurring: influence, wealth or power of an individual agent compared to other agents, and the degree of scarcity in the environment. These two factors represent sources of bias likely to affect or prejudice the outcome of agent interactions in familiar ways such as those observed in economic markets. Our modelled environment, the biased interaction game, demonstrates how these factors lead to inequality, thus mirroring a social hierarchy in human society, and reveals how the emergence of cooperative behaviour is moulded by the interaction of scarcity and inequality.