Behavioral and Network Origins of Wealth Inequality: Insights from a Virtual World

Fuchs, Benedikt; Thurner, Stefan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0103503

Cited by 24 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…3 (G, H) respectively. This agrees with Fuchs' result [44] that the output is correlated to both in-and out-degree. To avoid the impact of the in-and outdegree, we investigate the relation between the economic output y i and the position diversity d i of individuals with fixed k in , k out = 1, 3, 5 in Fig.…”

Section: Relationship Between Position Ratio Profiles and Economicsupporting

confidence: 92%

Individual position diversity in dependence socioeconomic networks increases economic output

Xie¹,

Yang²,

Li³

et al. 2017

EPJ Data Sci.

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The availability of big data recorded from massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the potential connection between individuals' network positions and their economic outputs. We use a statistical filtering method to construct dependence networks from weighted friendship networks of individuals. We investigate the 30 distinct motif positions in the 13 directed triadic motifs which represent microscopic dependences among individuals. Based on the structural similarity of motif positions, we further classify individuals into different groups. The node position diversity of individuals is found to be positively correlated with their economic outputs. We also find that the economic outputs of leaf nodes are significantly lower than that of the other nodes in the same motif. Our findings shed light on understanding the influence of network structure on economic activities and outputs in socioeconomic systems.

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Section: Relationship Between Position Ratio Profiles and Economicsupporting

confidence: 92%

Individual position diversity in dependence socioeconomic networks increases economic output

Xie¹,

Yang²,

Li³

et al. 2017

EPJ Data Sci.

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show abstract

“…The weak core identifies those individuals performing best in the virtual society. In previous studies, it has been shown that there is a direct relation between the degree of the player and its performance [22]. However, our findings indicate that nodes that are high social performers, well connected and part of a core group, need ties to other communities in the core.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 50%

“…We demonstrate our idea with data from the MMOG society of the game Pardus (http://www.pardus.at) [16], an open-ended online game with a worldwide player base which currently contains more than 420,000 people. MMOGs have been shown to be exceptional platforms over which quantitative results about social structures, dynamics, and organisational rules can be derived [7,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. In this game players live in a virtual, futuristic universe where they interact with other players in a multitude of ways to achieve their self-posed goals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Weak Core and the Structure of Elites in Social Multiplex Networks

Corominas-Murtra

Thurner

2016

Understanding Complex Systems

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Recent approaches on elite identification highlighted the important role of intermediaries, by means of a new definition of the core of a multiplex network, the generalised K-core. This newly introduced core subgraph crucially incorporates those individuals who, in spite of not being very connected, maintain the cohesiveness and plasticity of the core. Interestingly, it has been shown that the performance on elite identification of the generalised K-core is sensibly better that the standard K-core. Here we go further: Over a multiplex social system, we isolate the community structure of the generalised K-core and we identify the weakly connected regions acting as bridges between core communities, ensuring the cohesiveness and connectivity of the core region. This gluing region is the Weak core of the multiplex system. We test the suitability of our method on data from the society of 420.000 players of the Massive Multiplayer Online Game Pardus. Results show that the generalised K-core displays a clearly identifiable community structure and that the weak core gluing the core communities shows very low connectivity and clustering. Nonetheless, despite its low connectivity, the weak core forms a unique, cohesive structure. In addition, we find that members populating the weak core have the best scores on social performance, when compared to the other elements of the generalised K-core. The weak core provides a new angle on understanding the social structure of elites, highlighting those subgroups of individuals whose role is to glue different communities in the core.

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“…At the same time we know the players' exact positions at any point in time. The MMOG has been extensively studied as a human model society [4,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Pardus has more than 430,000 players who "live" in a virtual environment and interact with each other in a multitude of ways.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical Forces between Humans and How Humans Attract and Repel Each Other Based on Their Social Interactions in an Online World

Thurner

Fuchs

2015

PLoS ONE

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Physical interactions between particles are the result of the exchange of gauge bosons. Human interactions are mediated by the exchange of messages, goods, money, promises, hostilities, etc. While in the physical world interactions and their associated forces have immediate dynamical consequences (Newton’s laws) the situation is not clear for human interactions. Here we quantify the relative acceleration between humans who interact through the exchange of messages, goods and hostilities in a massive multiplayer online game. For this game we have complete information about all interactions (exchange events) between about 430,000 players, and about their trajectories (movements) in the metric space of the game universe at any point in time. We use this information to derive “interaction potentials" for communication, trade and attacks and show that they are harmonic in nature. Individuals who exchange messages and trade goods generally attract each other and start to separate immediately after exchange events end. The form of the interaction potential for attacks mirrors the usual “hit-and-run" tactics of aggressive players. By measuring interaction intensities as a function of distance, velocity and acceleration, we show that “forces" between players are directly related to the number of exchange events. We find an approximate power-law decay of the likelihood for interactions as a function of distance, which is in accordance with previous real world empirical work. We show that the obtained potentials can be understood with a simple model assuming an exchange-driven force in combination with a distance-dependent exchange rate.

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Behavioral and Network Origins of Wealth Inequality: Insights from a Virtual World

Cited by 24 publications

References 41 publications

Individual position diversity in dependence socioeconomic networks increases economic output

Individual position diversity in dependence socioeconomic networks increases economic output

The Weak Core and the Structure of Elites in Social Multiplex Networks

Physical Forces between Humans and How Humans Attract and Repel Each Other Based on Their Social Interactions in an Online World

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