Simple Mathematical Models Of Social Behavior

Abstract

We present and analyze minimal models for three social phenomena: the development of two-sided conflicts, interactions between conformists and contrarians, and pair formation between individuals seeking mates. In all three cases, the phenomena can be viewed as processes occurring on the node or edge values of a graph with fixed topology. Together, these three case studies illustrate that mathematical analysis of simple models may give us mechanistic insight into how real social systems behave.