Risk Sensitive and Ambiguity Reducing Dominance Interactions in a Virtual Laboratory.

In this paper the effects of dominance interactions on social-spatial structure (i.e. centrality of dominants) and social interaction patterns are studied in a simple virtual world: artificial entities inhabiting it are just grouping and performing dominance interactions in which the effects of winning and losing are self-reinforcing. I compare three strategies of attack. The first is based on the contention that aggression stops once individuals recognize the status of others (‘the Ambiguity Reducing strategy’). The second represents another popular view among ethologists, that attack depends on risks involved. The third version is a kind of control system. Here, entities attack obligatory whomever they encounter. In all three systems a dominance hierarchy develops and an increase in intensity of aggression leads to clearer differentiation of ranks, which has a cascade of effects on frequency of aggression, stability of ranks and spatial structure. Furthermore, a spatial structure with dominants in the center emerges in the control and risk sensitive strategy. In the risk sensitive system, bidirectionality of attack is decreased at higher intensities of aggression. Since the latter is observed in certain primate species too, other patterns that emerged for the risk sensitive strategy may be used as research hypotheses for these species.