Role of risk and information in a group formation experiment on a small-world network. (arXiv:1803.01085v1 [physics.soc-ph])

In social networks humans are generally benefited by maintaining friendships and community affiliation in which factors like homophily play key roles. These networks are far from being static, rather they are continually transforming or evolving as people from time to time decide to make new friendships and dissociate themselves from old ones. There is an element of risk in dissociations from friendships or group affiliations, especially when the decision to dissociate is done with limited information. In an experiment in the form of a cooperative game with human players we investigate the formation of groups and measure the perception of risk. In the game, the players set initially to a small world network and having limited information of its structure, coordinate their movements to form the groups. We also study the local coordination between players using a data-driven model of agents based on probability matching. Our results show that the pace of group formation is mainly dependent on local information processing of players. We find that humans even in limited information processing environments show optimal perception of risk.

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