Coordination in dynamic social networks under heterogeneity

People often make choices or form opinions depending on the social relations they have, but they also choose their relations depending on their preferred behavior and their opinions. Most of the existing models of coevolution of networks and individual behavior assume that actors are homogeneous. In this article, we relax this assumption in a context in which actors try to coordinate their behavior with their partners. We investigate with a game-theoretic model whether social cohesion and coordination change when interests of actors are not perfectly aligned as compared to the homogeneous case. Using analytical and simulation methods we characterize the set of stable networks and examine the consequences of heterogeneity for social optimality and segregation in emerging networks.

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