Social Conformity in Games with Many Players

Myrna Wooders, Edward Cartwright and Reinhard Selten

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: In the literature of psychology and economics it is frequently observed that individuals tend to imitate similar individuals. A fundamental question is whether the outcome of such imitation can be consistent with self-interested behaviour. We propose that this consistency requires the existence of a Nash equilibrium that introduces a partition of the player set into relatively few groups of similar individuals playing the same or similar strategies. In this paper we define and characterize a family of games admitting existence of approximate Nash equilibria in pure strategies that introduce partitions of the player sets with the desired properties. We also introduce the Conley-Wooders concept of 'crowding types' into our description of players and distinguish between the crowding type of a player - those characteristics of a player that have direct effect on others - and his tastes, taken to directly affect only that player. With the assumptions of 'within crowding type anonymity' and a 'convexity of taste-types' assumption we show that the number of groups can be uniformly bounded.

Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2003
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Social Conformity in Games with Many Players (2003)
Working Paper: Social Conformity in Games with Many Players (2003)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:682

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