Citation

Isakov A, Holcomb A, Glowacki L, Christakis NA. PLoS One 2016; 11(2): e0148314.

Affiliation

Yale Institute for Network Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0148314

PMID

26828362

PMCID

PMC4735492

Abstract

There is significant heterogeneity within and between populations in their propensity to engage in conflict. Most research has neglected the role of within-group effects in social networks in contributing to between-group violence and focused instead on the precursors and consequences of violence, or on the role of between-group ties. Here, we explore the role of individual variation and of network structure within a population in promoting and inhibiting group violence towards other populations. Motivated by ethnographic observations of collective behavior in a small-scale society, we describe a model with differentiated roles for individuals embedded within friendship networks. Using a simple model based on voting-like dynamics, we explore several strategies for influencing group-level behavior. When we consider changing population level attitude changes and introducing control nodes separately, we find that a particularly effective control strategy relies on exploiting network degree. We also suggest refinements to our model such as tracking fine-grained information spread dynamics that can lead to further enrichment in using evolutionary game theory models for sociological phenomena.

Language: en