IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/compec/v28y2006i3p233-249.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Cognitive Origins of Social Stratification

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Hoffmann

Abstract

In evolutionary psychology, cultural phenomena are explained with reference to evolved psychological processes. This paper presents an economic approach to explore this link by demonstrating how social stratification can arise in game-playing populations as a result of social categorisation of and inference from arbitrary agent traits. The computer simulation of the model demonstrates that agents' increasing ability to categorise opponents in the chicken game generates an increasing number of social groups whose members share commonality of fate both in terms of opponent behaviour and payoff levels. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Hoffmann, 2006. "The Cognitive Origins of Social Stratification," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 28(3), pages 233-249, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:compec:v:28:y:2006:i:3:p:233-249
    DOI: 10.1007/s10614-006-9046-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10614-006-9046-2
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10614-006-9046-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chaim Fershtman & Uri Gneezy, 2001. "Discrimination in a Segmented Society: An Experimental Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 351-377.
    2. Ashraf, Nava & Bohnet, Iris & Piankov, Nikita, 2003. "Is Trust a Bad Investment?," Working Paper Series rwp03-047, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    3. Herbert A. Simon, 1996. "The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262691914, April.
    4. Mueller,Dennis C., 2003. "Public Choice III," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521894753, September.
    5. Mailath, George J., 1992. "Introduction: Symposium on evolutionary game theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 259-277, August.
    6. Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert & Jones, Martin & Williams, Geoffrey, 2007. "Do cultures clash? Evidence from cross-national ultimatum game experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 35-48, September.
    7. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1991. "Adaptive and sophisticated learning in normal form games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 82-100, February.
    8. Berger, Ulrich, 2005. "Fictitious play in 2 x n games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 139-154, February.
    9. Robert Axtell, Joshua M. Epstein, & H. Peyton Young, "undated". "The Emergence of Economic Classes in an Agent-based Bargaining Model," Computing in Economics and Finance 1997 61, Society for Computational Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bunce, John A & McElreath, Richard, 2022. "Ethnicity and cultural dynamics," SocArXiv jr7u5, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Finocchiaro Castro, Massimo, 2008. "Where are you from? Cultural differences in public good experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2319-2329, December.
    2. Werner, Katharina & Graf Lambsdorff, Johann, 2016. "Emotional numbing and lessons learned after a violent conflict - Experimental evidence from Ambon, Indonesia," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe V-74-16, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    3. van Damme, Eric & Binmore, Kenneth G. & Roth, Alvin E. & Samuelson, Larry & Winter, Eyal & Bolton, Gary E. & Ockenfels, Axel & Dufwenberg, Martin & Kirchsteiger, Georg & Gneezy, Uri & Kocher, Martin G, 2014. "How Werner Güth's ultimatum game shaped our understanding of social behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 292-318.
    4. Burns, Justine, 2006. "Racial stereotypes, stigma and trust in post-apartheid South Africa," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 805-821, September.
    5. Nagel, Rosemarie & Bühren, Christoph & Frank, Björn, 2017. "Inspired and inspiring: Hervé Moulin and the discovery of the beauty contest game," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 191-207.
    6. Mahajna, Ahmad & Benzion, Uri & Bogaire, Ravid & Shavit, Tal, 2008. "Subjective discount rates among Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2513-2522, December.
    7. Jiequn Han & Ruimeng Hu & Jihao Long, 2020. "Convergence of Deep Fictitious Play for Stochastic Differential Games," Papers 2008.05519, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2021.
    8. Ulrich Berger, 2004. "Some Notes on Learning in Games with Strategic Complementarities," Game Theory and Information 0409001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert & Jones, Martin & Williams, Geoffrey, 2009. "An economic anatomy of culture: Attitudes and behaviour in inter- and intra-national ultimatum game experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 732-744, October.
    10. Chen, Josie I. & Foster, Andrew & Putterman, Louis, 2019. "Identity, trust and altruism: An experiment on preferences and microfinance lending," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    11. Andriy Zapechelnyuk, 2009. "Limit Behavior of No-regret Dynamics," Discussion Papers 21, Kyiv School of Economics.
    12. Dieckmann, Anja & Grimm, Veronika & Unfried, Matthias & Utikal, Verena & Valmasoni, Lorenzo, 2016. "On trust in honesty and volunteering among Europeans: Cross-country evidence on perceptions and behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 225-253.
    13. Borghans, José A.M. & Borghans, Lex & ter Weel, Bas, 2005. "Is There a Link between Economic Outcomes and Genetic Evolution? Cross-Country Evidence from the Major Histocompatibility Complex," IZA Discussion Papers 1838, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Goerg, Sebastian J. & Walkowitz, Gari, 2010. "On the prevalence of framing effects across subject-pools in a two-person cooperation game," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 849-859, December.
    15. Alessandro Innocenti & Maria Grazia Pazienza, 2006. "Altruism and Gender in the Trust Game," Labsi Experimental Economics Laboratory University of Siena 005, University of Siena.
    16. Olga Bogach & Andreas Leibbrandt, 2011. "An Experimental Study on the Relevance and Scope of Culture as a Focal Point," Working Papers 201104, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    17. Xia, Weiwei & Guo, Xiaohan & Luo, Jun & Ye, Hang & Chen, Yefeng & Chen, Shu & Xia, Weisen, 2021. "Religious identity, between-group effects and prosocial behavior: Evidence from a field experiment in China," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    18. Robert Hoffmann, 2013. "The Experimental Economics Of Religion," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(5), pages 813-845, December.
    19. Sebastian J Goerg & Heike Hennig-Schmidt & Gari Walkowitz & Eyal Winter, 2016. "In Wrong Anticipation - Miscalibrated Beliefs between Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-16, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:compec:v:28:y:2006:i:3:p:233-249. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.