Abstract
We report on a series of behavioral experiments in social networks in which human subjects continuously choose to play either a dominant role (called a King) or a submissive one (called a Pawn). Kings receive a higher payoff rate, but only if all their network neighbors are Pawns, and thus the maximum social welfare states correspond to maximum independent sets. We document that fairness is of vital importance in driving interactions between players. First, we find that payoff disparities between network neighbors gives rise to conflict, and the specifics depend on the network topology. However, allowing Kings to offer “tips” or side payments to their neighbors substantially reduces conflict, and consistently increases social welfare. Finally, we observe that tip reductions lead to increased conflict. We describe these and a broad set of related findings.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Akerlof, G., Shiller, R.J.: Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. Princeton University Press (2009)
Akerlof, G.A., Yellen, J.L.: The fair wage-effort hypothesis and unemployment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 105(2), 255–283 (1990)
Berninghaus, S.K., Keser, C., Vogt, B.: Strategy choice and network effects. In: Ockenfels, A., Sadrieh, A. (eds.) The Selten School of Behavioral Economics, ch. 8, pp. 89–109. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Bolton, G.E., Ockenfels, A.: ERC: A theory of equity, reciprocity, and competition. American Economic Review 90(1), 166–193 (2000)
Brown, R.: Social Psychology, 2nd edn. The Free Press (1986)
Camerer, C.F.: Behavioral Game Theory. Princeton University Press (2003)
Fehr, E., Schmidt, K.: Fairness, competition, and inequlity. Quarterly Journal of Economics 114(3), 817–868 (1999)
Fehr, E., Gächter, S.: Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. American Economic Review 90(4), 980–994 (2000)
Fudenberg, D., Levine, D.K.: The Theory of Learning in Games. The MIT Press (1999)
Garey, M.R., Johson, D.S.: Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness. W.H. Freeman (1979)
Judd, S., Kearns, M.: Behavioral experiments in networked trade. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (2008)
Judd, S., Kearns, M., Vorobeychik, Y.: Behavioral dynamics and influence in networked coloring and consensus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(34), 14978–14982 (2010)
Kearns, M., Judd, S., Tan, J., Wortman, J.: Behavioral experiments on biased voting in networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(5), 1347–1352 (2009)
Kearns, M., Suri, S., Montfort, N.: An experimental study of the coloring problem on human subject networks. Science 313(5788), 824–827 (2006)
Neugebauer, T., Poulsen, A., Schram, A.: Fairness and reciprocity in the Hawk Dove game. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 66(2), 243–250 (2008)
Newman, M.: Networks: An Introduction. Oxford University Press (2010)
Oprea, R., Henwood, K., Friedman, D.: Separating the Hawks from the Doves: Evidence from continuous time laboratory games. Working paper (2010)
Rabin, M.: Incorporating fairness into game theory and economics. American Economic Review 83(5), 1281–1302 (1993)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Judd, S., Kearns, M., Vorobeychik, Y. (2011). Behavioral Conflict and Fairness in Social Networks. In: Chen, N., Elkind, E., Koutsoupias, E. (eds) Internet and Network Economics. WINE 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7090. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25510-6_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25510-6_21
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-25509-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-25510-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)