title: Modeling the Role of Networks and Individual Differences in Inter-Group Violence.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Isakov
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.
authors.forename: Amelia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Holcomb
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.|Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Luke
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Glowacki
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.|Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.|Yale Institute for Network Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.
authors.forename: Nicholas A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Christakis
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D060756:Social Networking; D013997:Time Factors; D014754:Violence
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