Neutral agents and social tolerance: a dynamic perspective based on economic interaction model with local social cost functions

ABSTRACT

The influence of neutral agents on the evolutionary dynamics of social tolerance is discussed based on a recently proposed economic interaction model with local social cost functions. We show that the dynamical structure of social tolerance is completely changed even if a few neutral agents are introduced into the society. Especially, the full intolerance steady state, which is stable in previous works, becomes unstable and avoidable due to the economic incentive introduced by the neutral agents. The necessary condition of achieving full tolerance is also reduced compared to previous works without neutral agents.

KEYWORDS:

• Evolutionary dynamics
• social tolerance
• neutral agents
• local social cost function

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C73
• D70

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research, Ministry of Education of China under Grant number 15JZD013, and the self-determined research funds of CCNU from the colleges’ basic research and operation of MOE under Grant number 23020205170451.