Abstract:Political theorists have long argued that enlarging the political sphere to include a greater diversity of interests would cure the ills of factions in a pluralistic society. While the scope of politics has expanded dramatically over the past 75 y, polarization is markedly worse. Motivated by this paradox, we take a bottom–up approach to explore how partisan individual-level dynamics in a diverse (multidimensional) issue space can shape collective-level factionalization via an emergent dimensionality reduction… Show more
“…following a reduction in the benefit-cost ratio of cooperative interactions (Figure 4). This phenomenon, in which increased adversity leads to a loss of cooperation with, and increasingly negative attitudes towards, out-groups, is consistent with empirical and theoretical accounts of inter-group conflict [11,37,38] and a growing body of work focused on the global trend towards mass political polarization [39][40][41][42][43][44]. What our results highlight is that such an increase in negative attitudes towards out-groups is a fundamental feature of the dynamics of cultural evolution, which arises when there is a mismatch between the optimal state of the system before and after an exogenous shock.…”
Stereotyping is an unavoidable feature of the way humans see each another. As such, understanding how stereotypes are formed, and when they turn negative, can have important consequences for tackling prejudice, discrimination and inter-group conflict. We study the cultural evolution of stereotyping through changes in the willingness of people to cooperate with one another based solely on their group identity. We show that stereotyping often leads to negative judgement bias in which people are overly pessimistic about the willingness of those they stereotype to cooperate. We also show that high cognitive load, or sudden economic crises, can make stereotyping more widespread and more negative. However under more benign conditions, stereotypes can evolve to be positive, and inter-group cooperation can flourish.
“…following a reduction in the benefit-cost ratio of cooperative interactions (Figure 4). This phenomenon, in which increased adversity leads to a loss of cooperation with, and increasingly negative attitudes towards, out-groups, is consistent with empirical and theoretical accounts of inter-group conflict [11,37,38] and a growing body of work focused on the global trend towards mass political polarization [39][40][41][42][43][44]. What our results highlight is that such an increase in negative attitudes towards out-groups is a fundamental feature of the dynamics of cultural evolution, which arises when there is a mismatch between the optimal state of the system before and after an exogenous shock.…”
Stereotyping is an unavoidable feature of the way humans see each another. As such, understanding how stereotypes are formed, and when they turn negative, can have important consequences for tackling prejudice, discrimination and inter-group conflict. We study the cultural evolution of stereotyping through changes in the willingness of people to cooperate with one another based solely on their group identity. We show that stereotyping often leads to negative judgement bias in which people are overly pessimistic about the willingness of those they stereotype to cooperate. We also show that high cognitive load, or sudden economic crises, can make stereotyping more widespread and more negative. However under more benign conditions, stereotypes can evolve to be positive, and inter-group cooperation can flourish.
“…Maybe we should extend the focus towards other issues that can be addressed by evolutionary game theory, such as analyse complex interactions [12,13], cyclic dynamics [14][15][16][17][18] and also social interactions of multiple actors [19][20][21][22]. It can also be the basis to analyse more complex social issues such as polarization [23][24][25]. (d) The mathematical developments in evolutionary game theory can sometimes be detached from the systems that are the focus of the application Theoretical scientists are not always driven by applications, but often they are driven by the further development of modelling tools and the development of theories that summarize more general features.…”
Section: (C) Cooperation Is Currently the Focus Of Evolutionary Game ...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Maybe we should extend the focus towards other issues that can be addressed by evolutionary game theory, such as analyse complex interactions [ 12 , 13 ], cyclic dynamics [ 14 – 18 ] and also social interactions of multiple actors [ 19 – 22 ]. It can also be the basis to analyse more complex social issues such as polarization [ 23 – 25 ]. Figure 2 The most commonly used keywords.…”
Section: The Current State Of Evolutionary Game Theorymentioning
Evolutionary game theory is a truly interdisciplinary subject that goes well beyond the limits of biology. Mathematical minds get hooked up in simple models for evolution and often gradually move into other parts of evolutionary biology or ecology. Social scientists realize how much they can learn from evolutionary thinking and gradually transfer insight that was originally generated in biology. Computer scientists can use their algorithms to explore a new field where machines not only learn from the environment, but also from each other. The breadth of the field and the focus on a few very popular issues, such as cooperation, comes at a price: several insights are re-discovered in different fields under different labels with different heroes and modelling traditions. For example, reciprocity or spatial structure are treated differently. Will we continue to develop things in parallel? Or can we converge to a single set of ideas, a single tradition and eventually a single software repository? Or will these fields continue to cross-fertilize each other, learning from each other and engaging in a constructive exchange between fields? Ultimately, the popularity of evolutionary game theory rests not only on its explanatory power, but also on the intuitive character of its models.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Half a century of evolutionary games: a synthesis of theory, application and future directions’.
“…However, polarization and hostility are increasingly shifting from social media to the real world, as it was demonstrated by several political events, such as the protests of the Yellow Vest movement [46] in France in 2018, the protests after George Floyd's death [120] in 2020, the US Capitol attack [121] in 2021, and the convoy protests [11] in Canada in 2022. Partisan and ideological sectarianism has increased, leading to the erosion of democratic values in several countries [78].…”
Polarization arises when the underlying network connecting the members of a society is formed by highly connected groups with weak intergroup connectivity. The increasing polarization, the strengthening of echo chambers, and the isolation caused by information filters in social networks are increasingly attracting the attention of researchers from different areas of knowledge such as computer science, economics, social and political sciences. Despite hundreds of publications in this area, there was little effort to systematize or present the knowledge developed in the field in an organized way. This study presents an annotated review of network polarization measures, models used to handle existing polarization, their applications, and case studies. Altogether, 405 scientific articles and conference papers were examined, with 74 filtered for this review. Several approaches for measuring polarization in graphs and networks were identified, including those based on homophily, modularity, random walks, and balance theory. The models used for reducing polarization included methods that propose edge or node editions (including edge insertions or deletions, and edge weight modifications), changes in social network design, or changes in the recommendation systems embedded in these networks. This review will be helpful to researchers investigating polarized social networks from a theoretical and applied perspective.
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