Prejudice, privilege, and power : conflicts and cooperation between recognizable groups
Date
2019
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AIMS Press
Abstract
The problem of cooperation remains one of the fundamental questions in the fields of biology, sociology, and economics. The emergence and maintenance of cooperation are naturally affected by group dynamics, since individuals are likely to behave differently based on shared group membership. We here formulate a model of socio-economic power between two prejudiced groups, and explore the conditions for their cooperative coexistence under two social scenarios in a well-mixed environment. Each scenario corresponds to an asymmetrical increase in the payoffs for mutual cooperation in either cross-group or within-group interactions. In the 'inter-dependence' scenario payoffs of cross-group cooperation are enhanced, while in the 'group-cohesion' scenario payoffs of within-group cooperation are enhanced. We find that stable cooperative coexistence is possible only in the inter-dependence scenario. The conditions for such coexistence are highly sensitive to prejudice, defined as the reduction in probability for cross-group cooperation, and less sensitive to privilege, defined as the enhancements to payoffs of cross-group cooperation.
Description
CITATION: Bingham, J., Landi, P. & Hui, C. 2019. Prejudice, privilege, and power : conflicts and cooperation between recognizable groups.
Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 16(5):4092-4106, doi:10.3934/mbe.2019203.
The original publication is available at https://www.aimspress.com
The original publication is available at https://www.aimspress.com
Keywords
Mathematical sociology
Citation
Bingham, J., Landi, P. & Hui, C. 2019. Prejudice, privilege, and power : conflicts and cooperation between recognizable groups.
Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 16(5):4092-4106, doi:10.3934/mbe.2019203