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Updated: Oct 24, 2025

The HoneyComb Paradigm for Research on Collective Human Behavior
Published on: January 19, 2019
A network formation game for the emergence of hierarchies
Pedro Cisneros-Velarde1, Francesco Bullo2
1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America.
Abstract:
We propose a novel network formation game that explains the emergence of various hierarchical structures in groups where self-interested or utility-maximizing individuals decide to establish or severe relationships of authority or collaboration among themselves. We consider two settings: we first consider individuals who do not seek the other party's consent when establishing a relationship and then individuals who do. For both settings, we formally relate the emerged hierarchical structures with the novel inclusion of well-motivated hierarchy promoting terms in the individuals' utility functions. We first analyze the game via a static analysis and characterize all the hierarchical structures that can be formed as its solutions. We then consider the game played dynamically under stochastic interactions among individuals implementing better-response dynamics and analyze the nature of the converged networks.
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