
Hierarchy Is Detrimental for Human Cooperation - rfreytag
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18634
======
tdaltonc
This is an odd paper. It reads like a so-so experimental game theory paper
written by an anthropologist. The task was designed to produce Nash equilibria
that would fit story they wanted to tell. And they as though they are
surprised to see "the behavior of the two partners is only qualitatively
similar to" the behavior the game was designed to elicit.

I think that the most interesting finding is buried halfway down.

"Another interesting observation is that for greater rank differences (lower
k), the higher ranked individuals are prone to share an amount larger than the
Nash prediction." This means that the player in the dominate position behaved
more fairly then they needed to.

Given that finding I think this would be a better titile: "Hierarchy is Not as
Detrimental for Human Cooperation as You Might Expect"

~~~
zenogais
They rediscovered what Nietzsche wrote about 100+ years ago. High-ranking
individuals in any society cooperate with each other more readily than with
lower ranked individuals (The Gay Science, Book 1 Aphorism 13 - and many
others)

~~~
wfo
"Rediscovering" 19-20th century philosophy and massaging data to fit it
describes much of modern research psychology.

------
evv555
The issue I have with these kinds of narratives is they conflate structural
and social/power hierarchies. People have spent alot of time rallying against
the former thinking it's the latter. The two often correlate in the case of
human organizations but are not equivalent. Structural hierarchy also seems to
be an intractable problem. It's smarter to construct hierarchies that are more
inclusive then to be categorically against the idea.

------
dkural
I believe hierarchy is not detrimental at all (indeed, it is a pre-requisite)
for cooperation. Humanity spent the vast majority of its history in loose
bands of tribes with no clear inter-tribal hierarchy. Thus we spent thousands
of years murdering each other on contact. You may think you are "peers" in the
US / West etc, but in fact you are peers in that you've accepted an
overarching higher authority in the form of the government - in particular,
it's ability to enforce laws by coercion and violence. Thus instead of
wondering if the other guy is about to bash your skull, we coexist in relative
peace.

International relations, however, lack clear hierarchy - it is a semi-
structured anarchy of might-makes-right. Thus we fail to cooperate on many
"tragedy of the commons" type problems, such as climate change. Chronic
warfare is a defining feature of the 20th century due to this lack of
hierarchy.

At the micro level, try running a startup with no hierarchy. You'll find that
this will fester conflict, as engineers endlessly argue with no mechanism to
bring decisions efficiently and move forward. Indeed, hierarchy is emergent,
and tolerated for its virtues by humans because when it does not emerge, the
"company" of people dissipate and fail their mission.

~~~
golemotron
I believe this is true too. Hierarchy is a pre-requisite for cooperation.

The most productive OSS projects all seem to have benevolent dictators, don't
they?

------
rubidium
"Given a longer sequence of repeated interactions, it might be possible that
members of a hierarchically organized group would partially overcome mistrust
of higher ranked individuals in those that establish generous reputations and
these individuals might be able to elicit more contributions from their lower
ranked partners. "

To be clear about the implications of this study: Society = longer sequence of
repeated interactions. This study is not relevant to thinking about organizing
society. It acknowledges it has zero relevance to whether hierarchy is good or
bad for human society.

~~~
mizzao
My research group is currently writing up the results for a study where we
experimentally studied cooperation that took place over an entire month. We
found the very interesting result that cooperation was basically maintained at
a high level instead of declining over the course of a 1-hour lab session, as
predicted by much previous work.

On a related point, this experiment is a little worrisome because each player
only had "9 rounds" to interact with others due to the concern of extended
reputation effects. In my experience running this type of experiment, that is
not even enough to understand the rules within which people play. (In our
case, we had people play 400 ten-round games, 4000 rounds total, and a steady
state was reached after about 60-80 games.)

While not completely an "organized society", it does address the
generalization limitations of behavioral labs in one important way: the time
and span of participation. As you mentioned, this is one fundamental respect
where society differs from experiments.

~~~
tdaltonc
You didn't see any horizon effect? People didn't become more likely to "cheat"
as the game and the value of their reputation approached an end?

~~~
mizzao
We did see that effect! But, it was pretty minor. In fact, we saw all sorts of
effects that would have been impossible to observe in a traditional lab
experiment.

One other interesting effect we saw was a day-to-day restart effect: just
leaving and coming back the next day was enough to raise the amount of
cooperation a significant amount. It's not detectable at the individual level,
but in aggregate it's as if going everyone going about their life for a day
was enough to instill some new optimism about cooperation at the beginning of
a new session than at the end of the day before.

Just that last observation returns to the original point that was made: is it
even reasonable to draw conclusions about real-life cooperation from these
highly clustered, short-term studies in a lab? We're trying to show that the
"virtual lab" on the Internet is a way to get around these constraints.

If you're doing research in this area, check out our OSS projects:
[https://github.com/VirtualLab](https://github.com/VirtualLab)

~~~
tdaltonc
That's a very interesting project. The field desperately needs an alternative
to z-tree and psychtoolbox. JS web app seems like a great solution!

I' wrapping up my PhD in neuroEcon at USC. I've started a company to help
developers use neuro/econ/psych findings to improve their apps. Let me know
when you're done with your post-doc. I might have some applied research
questions you'd find interesting.

~~~
mizzao
Interestingly, I think "the field" now refers to an intersection of not just
economics and psychology, but also sociology, computer science, and others.
More and more behavioral research is going to be done on the Internet and this
is going to play a role in designing socio-technical systems.

Although it might sound like an oxymoron, I think computer scientists are
going to be both best equipped for and have the most reason to study digital
human behavior.

~~~
tdaltonc
I totally agree. Behavioral science needs an applied branch, and computer
scientists are going to have a big role to play there.

------
golemotron
Undoing hierarchy at every turn is in the zeitgeist. We need to take some time
to appreciate when it is useful. My belief is that it is useful for quick
action and inevitable when human systems scale.

~~~
k__
The problem doesn't seem to be hierarchy, but that it's expected to climb it.

Some people are good in management, some aren't.

But if you're long enough in a job, you have to take on a management position
to get paid more or to make decisions in your favor.

Yes the payment thing isn't a big problem in the IT sector, senior engineers
often get paid as much or even more than managers. But the decision part is
still a problem. Often you end up with stupid ideas you have to execute and
the only way to change them is to get rid of the manager, because he won't
consider he failed...

~~~
laotzu
Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure? Whether you go up
the ladder or down it, your position is shaky.

When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your
balance.

-Lao Tzu

~~~
eggie
Lovely. Are you a Lao Tzu quote bot ;) ?

------
codeismightier
The experiment seems poorly designed if the purpose is to simulate the real
world:

"In the cooperation phase, both players ... contribute simultaneously ... to a
common pot, unaware of the partner’s contribution." The higher-ranked player
then gets priority in determining how the payoff is split.

Who goes to work without agreeing on a salary?? Who co-founds a company
without agreeing to an equity split??

The connotation for the so-called "lower ranked player" is also misleading, as
in the real world the employer is more similar to their "lower ranked player":
the employer usually commits to paying the employee around three months' worth
of salary first. The employee then gets to choose to slack off or work hard.
So, in a sense, the employee gets to choose how to divide the payoff: the
employee always gets the salary, while the employer gets (output - salary). Of
course, in the real world the game is then iterated, as the employer gets to
choose to fire the employee or continue the relationship.

Any experiment in game theory that doesn't involve iteration is highly
unrealistic -- the fact that we have a reputation to keep and have to deal
with each other over and over again is pretty darn important! Frankly I'm a
little bit disappointed that Nature has chosen to publish this paper, as I
don't see what insight it offers.

~~~
RobertoG
"The experiment seems poorly designed if the purpose is to simulate the real
world"

The stated purpose is to try to reproduce the same experiments and behaviors
that observed in other primates.

Some insights I get:

1\. In those conditions, our behavior is very similar to other primates.

2\. The splitting phase is not influenced by the collaboration phase (I can't
avoid to note that you don't choose to apply this insight to start ups).

3\. There is some component that we don't understand that account for the
difference with the Nash equilibrium.

4\. When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail

~~~
codeismightier
>> 2\. The splitting phase is not influenced by the collaboration phase (I
can't avoid to note that you don't choose to apply this insight to start ups).

Vesting is supposed to serve that purpose by allowing a co-founder who doesn't
contribute to be fired. Certainly it can be harder to fire a non-performing
co-founder though.

------
hyperdunc
I remember reading a study recently about the health aspects of power
disparity. It concluded hierarchical social structures impose significant
physical and mental health risks on those at the bottom. Unfortunately I can't
find the source.

~~~
RobertoG
An interesting observation related to this is posture.

The posture that show higher status, straight back, looking to the front and
not down, relaxed muscles, etc.. need less energy and is better for your
health.

Another interesting though is how good food makes you bigger an taller.

So, however is low in the hierarchy, is always less strong and in worst shape,
what makes them to get less food, and so on.. It's easy to see how a feedback
of this kind begins.

Of course, all this is carry on to the next generation by several dynamics.

I try to remember all this when I hear how some communities are hopeless or
just 'don't want to work'.

------
dawnbreez
Hierarchy may be bad for cooperation, but it is great for quick decision
making. Further, I would argue that the decrease in "investment" shown in
lower-level members of a team is not a symptom of hierarchy, but a symptom of
bad leadership--the appoonted leader doesn't know how to lead, and the
decision to make him leader seems unfair.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It really isn't. It's great for quick bad decision making, but so is rolling a
die. It takes so much time and effort for information to flow up and down the
hierarchy that it takes a long time for informed decisions to get made, let
alone good ones.

~~~
dawnbreez
That's where chain-of-command and executive decisions come into play. In an
army field manual for tactics, it states that each level in the hierarchy of a
chain of command should be responsible for a certain level of the battlefield;
the Commander in Chief decides who to go to war against, the general decides
which city is a priority, his liutenants decide how to assault the city, the
sergeants decide which building to run to, and the private decides how to get
to that building in a timely manner.

Most businesses do not do this. They rely entirely on decisions from higher
up, which are often uninformed about small-picture things, even if they
understand the big picture.

~~~
kitsune_
This doesn't alleviate the big problem with command hierarchies. If the top
decision is wrong, and the commander in chief / CEO is ignorant to the advice
of their subordinates, there usually is no other recourse than mutiny (war
time) or resignation (businesses). This is played out at every level of the
hierarchy.

~~~
michaelt
Which command structure is most appropriate will depend on the challenges the
business is facing.

If the business has solid fundamentals and basically needs to keep making
incremental improvements and watch the money roll in, almost any management
structure will do it.

But if a business has needs exit a market with poor fundamentals, and that
requires them to close factories, end product lines and fire people? The
people getting fired won't be happy about that. So if your management
structure requires their consent, you're going to have a bad time.

------
tbrownaw
_Hierarchy is defined as priority of access to resources and probability of
winning competitive encounters_

...and cooperation is some game that sounds like the lower-ranked participant
will have a negative expected return (double a common pot -- as long as it's
above threshold -- and let the higher-ranked person take more than half).

.

I'm thinking this won't apply very well to situations where everyone has a
positive expected return. Like most real-world organizations, companies, etc.

~~~
RobertoG
"I'm thinking this won't apply very well to situations where everyone has a
positive expected return. Like most real-world organizations, companies, etc."

Don't understand your point. In the experiment, the low ranked persons get a
positive return.

It's just that, the return, it's determined, not by the investment in the
cooperation phase, but by the position in the hierarchy.

How that doesn't apply?

~~~
tbrownaw
Because they get less than half of the doubled pot?

...re-reading, it sounds like the pot is actually set to double the threshold
rather than doubling whatever's in it. Which means the way I was trying to
calculate things out won't work, but also explains why the splitting phase
behaved like it did.

------
davidovitch
Ultimately, what this paper means to me is that there is evidence (based on
simplified conditions, granted) that people collaborate better when they
believe they will receive a fair share of the outcome. This makes a lot of
sense to me, especially when comparing to real life.

For example, why is it that in many cases it is the small startup that creates
innovative new technologies compared to large and well funded established
players? I guess there are many factors at play, but I would argue that at
least one factor relates to a more successful collaboration within the smaller
environment, which in part is sourced upon the fact that there is promise of a
higher payout in the case of success (equity as part of the salary).

~~~
HelloMcFly
> that people collaborate better when they believe they will receive a fair
> share of the outcome.

There's research demonstrating that group effort and outcomes are
detrimentally impacted by increased pay dispersion among the group members.
Pay dispersion could form an "informal hierarchy", I suppose.

------
sfg
When I think of hierarchy - in the context of a shared task - I think of who
gets to make decisions about how a task is done, but here it seems to be about
who gets to decide how the bounty is split when the split happens after the
task is complete and bounty already earned. So, testing hierarchy of post
result bounty splitting rather than hierarchy of task co-ordination.

What does this relate to in the world? How is it a test of a relevant type of
hierarchy? Am I missing something (I would not be surprised, we all have
mental blindspots)?

~~~
RobertoG
Hierarchy in the natural world is decided by power. And power means that you
can get the most, never mind what the others think.

If a chimpanzee leave other to decide because the other is better in the task
at hand and, then, they split the bounty, they have both the same hierarchy.

If a chimpanzee leave other in the group to decide how to do the task and then
keep everything for himself, he is in the top of the hierarchy and the other
is just working for him.

In the not so natural world too, by the way.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> power means that you can get the most, never mind what the others think.

No, sometimes the bounty is having influence. You're not looking far enough up
the hierarchy of needs:

[https://figures.boundless.com/29841/large/Maslow's_hierarchy...](https://figures.boundless.com/29841/large/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs.png)

------
norea-armozel
I wonder if they controlled for specific relationships like the participants
never have met prior to the trials or anything of that sort. I can't find
anything the article to indicate that.

------
MarlonPro
Did Tony Hsieh commission this study? I'm just wondering ;-) jk

------
sjg007
If you exploit people without giving them a fair share then they will
eventually revolt.

------
galfarragem
Hierarchy, not money, makes the world go round.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Neither of those categorical statements are true. The world is a heterogenous
overlaying of all possible political systems working simultaneously. There is
capitalism (money), there is delegation (hierarchy), there is anarchism...
often in the same room.

------
laotzu
Linear hierarchy may have been effective for quick decision making in the age
of paper and print but as Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt point out in
their book Take Today: The Executive as Dropout (1972)[1], in the age of
electric media distributed networking and flat hierarchies become the most
effective organizational form and "Johnny on the spot" is the one who makes
the quickest and most accurate decision as opposed to the executive:

McLuhan: Take today means that at the speed of light, today includes all the
past that ever was, and all the future, it's here now.

Nevitt: That is we can retrieve the past, we can be in touch with the present,
and the future of the future is the present, so we are in touch with all times
now, today.

McLuhan: But let us notice that in a world of simultaneous information, you
have basically an acoustic world, not a visual world with a point of view, not
a positional world from which to look at the future or the past, but an
acoustic world in which you are bombarded simultaneously by every kind of data
from every direction ... the simultaneity of information means that you live
in a world which is simultaneous in terms of its information structure. From
every direction you have information electrically. Now this creates a new kind
of space.

Nevitt: Yes, it is a new kind of space for us and yet an old kind of space for
humanity.

McLuhan: Well, for pre-literate man.

Nevitt: Yes.

McLuhan: The space in which we live is identical to the space of pre-literate
man, pre-visual man, it is acoustic space.

Nevitt: Post-literate space and pre-literate space are similar.

McLuhan: Yes but the question that seems not to have entered most minds is,
what is the structure of acoustic space? In fact, most psychologists have
never heard of acoustic space and they don't understand its properties. Its
properties are those of a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose margin
is nowhere.

Nevitt: That is, no boundaries, and no single center, but centers everywhere.

McLuhan: centers everywhere, margins nowhere.

Nevitt: No points of view. ...

McLuhan: The old structure was made up of fragmented specialist jobs.

Nevitt: Exactly, and hierarchies of responsibility which were delegated from
the top down and channels of communication which were supposed by the
organization chart upon which they flow from top to bottom, and bottom to top.

McLuhan: So the theme of our book is that you cannot use an organization chart
with electric services added.

Nevitt: So that "the executive is drop out" means three things, it means first
of all: the man who finds himself as top executive in a large organization,
gets out of touch with the action, that is, he gets so far out of touch with
what's happening, that as a human being, he has no more satisfactions in the
process. That’s the first thing it means. The second thing is that specialism
as a means of coping with this acoustic space, doesn't work, that is it has
dropped out, it is no longer effective. And the third thing is, that in a
knowledge environment, that is where the information is everywhere, like
acoustic space with centers everywhere and margins or boundaries are nowhere,
then every man knows how to be an executive, and "johnny on the spot" is the
man who really makes the decision.

McLuhan: Oh, the hijacker is a nice case of a man who wants to be an executive
and wants to take over an operation but he also wants coverage, he wants part
of that global theatre for himself, he wants to be in the center of the show.

Nevitt: And the global theater itself becomes possible, and the hijacker
becomes possible only in a world which is such that you are on camera.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTyzjC_s-
kk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTyzjC_s-kk)

~~~
clavalle
>flat hierarchies become the most effective organizational form

Luckily, as folks with an understanding of data structures we can see this is
a very naive approach. 'Electric services' must have seemed very new and
frightening to inspire this scattered response.

~~~
laotzu
Care to elaborate?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Caching, caching, caching. And load balancing.

~~~
laotzu
McLuhan and Nevitt are talking about human organizational structure, not
technical design.

~~~
clavalle
Information flows are information flows whatever the medium.

Hierarchies are efficient, that is why they exist.

If we want to know what branch of a tree structure to find information we
examine a node after gathering info on how that data structure is put together
and work our way down. If we want to know who is responsible for some aspect
of an organization we ask the boss after gathering some basic info on how that
organization is structured and work our way down.

As much as electronic signals have reduced friction, having a complete lack of
hierarchy will quickly eliminate any efficiency advantage that provides as
long as there is any communication friction whatsoever.

~~~
laotzu
Just to reiterate, the study we are discussing and my original post are about
inefficiencies in the design of human social hierarchies and not
inneficiencies in data structures.

>Hierarchies are efficient, that is why they exist.

They exist because they are legacy systems that were once efficient or at
least practical.

>If we want to know who is responsible for some aspect of an organization we
ask the boss after gathering some basic info on how that organization is
structured and work our way down.

This is exactly what is now inneficient. When information was centralized due
to the constraints of paper and print media this may have been efficient. But
now that information is decentralized and distributed it becomes much quicker
to simply query the information instantaneously yourself rather than having to
go through a third party.

Centralized information leads to pyramid shaped social hierarchies.

Distributed information leads to flat or spherical internetworked social
organization.

~~~
clavalle
> it becomes much quicker to simply query the information instantaneously
> yourself rather than having to go through a third party.

But we are still going through a third party to make that query. We are not
doing it ourselves. Information is more centralized than ever. Google itself
organizes it into a hierarchy. It may be more fluid than a bunch of people
shuffling papers in an office or government building but the basic structure
is still there. Besides, raw information is only one small part of the story.
The other half of information is generation which is still boxed by
responsibility (a long term information store in human form) that is most
often, even today, most easily navigated to through a hierarchical
organization. It might not look like the old hierarchies but that doesn't mean
they are not there.

------
mozumder
Can explain why Republicans are less empathetic towards their fellow citizens,
as they tend to be more about libertarian self empowerment, where they are
kings of their own world.

Example: If you have a gun, you are placing yourself above others in order to
gain power over them, and are therefore less likely to cooperate with your
fellow citizens by offering to pay for their health care through taxes.

~~~
skaevola
"Republicans are less empathetic towards their fellow citizens"

Seriously?

It's well established that conservatives/republicans donate more to charity.

Here's Nicholas Kristoff's column on it:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=0)

Not only do Republicans donate more in absolute terms to charity, they also
have lower average incomes, which means that the average giving as a portion
of income is much higher. And it's not just donations to their church,
Republicans are even more likely to donate blood than Democrats!

I'm not writing this because I want to claim the moral high ground for the
Republicans, I see Republicans and Democrats as each having different takes on
how best to help the poor. Neither side has a monopoly on empathy.

~~~
mozumder
> It's well established that conservatives/republicans donate more to charity.

Liberals solve social problems through taxes and big government, instead of
donations.

Neither side may have a monopoly, but one side is far more effective than the
other at solving social problems.

~~~
jerf
I honestly don't even know which side it is that you think is "far more
effective" at solving social problems. Do you think it's the Democrats?
Because "big government and taxes" are also far more effective at _creating_
social problems that local charities. Have you read about the corrosive
effects of welfare on black communities? Have you ever joined in complaining
about the inability of public school systems to successfully adapt and harness
changing technologies? Have you noticed that our biggest social problems just
"happen" to also be located right where Democratic policies were _enacted_
(i.e., the policies _preceded_ the social degradation)? All of these things
are certainly at least debatable, but they are also certainly not so obviously
false that they can simply be discarded without consideration.

"Big government and taxes" may _theoretically_ be more capable of solving
problems, but there's a big gulf between theory and reality.

And back on point so this is at least _less_ an off-topic diversion than it
otherwise would be, are you A: inclined to agree that hierarchies are bad for
cooperation even as B: you declare that the largest hierarchy in the world,
"government", is better at solving social problems than distributed non-
hierarchical networks? I don't know, because you, mozumder, personally didn't
say, but I rather suspect there's a lot of people here holding both those
beliefs simultaneously without noticing the profound philosophical conflicts
they have.

~~~
mozumder
_Have you read about the corrosive effects of welfare on black communities?_

No. I have read about welfare reducing poverty. I'm sure you have, too.

 _Have you ever joined in complaining about the inability of public school
systems to successfully adapt and harness changing technologies?_

No. I have read about public schools outperforming private charter schools.

 _Have you noticed that our biggest social problems just "happen" to also be
located right where Democratic policies were enacted (i.e., the policies
preceded the social degradation)?_

No. I have read about liberal policies solving social problems, as usual.

 _All of these things are certainly at least debatable, but they are also
certainly not so obviously false that they can simply be discarded without
consideration._

Why not? I just discarded them without consideration, and you can, too.

The question isn't whether or not liberal policies solve problems far more
effectively than Republican policies. The question is how quickly you will
accept that truth.

~~~
bobby_9x
"No. I have read about welfare reducing poverty. I'm sure you have, too."

Only in the short-term. In the long-term, it creates generations of people
completely dependent on the government, never really getting the chance to get
themselves out of poverty.

All of my extended family are like this. They don't work because the
government gives them enough to live.

"No. I have read about public schools outperforming private charter schools."

Where is the proof of this? In my area, the public schools are terrible. It
sickens me that I have to pay taxes to support them when they just continue to
spiral downward. It's also impossible to get rid of bad teachers, because
whenever some sort of solution is suggested (for measuring effectiveness), the
unions come back and say it isn't possible.

"The question isn't whether or not liberal policies solve problems far more
effectively than Republican policies. The question is how quickly you will
accept that truth"

Most liberal solutions that I've seen leave out human nature and a history of
complete failure and re-dress it as something 'new'.

~~~
mozumder
_it creates generations of people completely dependent on the government_

Where are these magical people that aren't dependent on government?

Are you one of those? How do you travel? Do you build your own roads? What do
you do for mail? Do you use UPS for all mail, and they use their own roads?

Did your employees learn literacy from private schools? Or did government
teach them? How did they learn to follow work instructions?

I would like to find these magical people that aren't dependent on government.
They sound like they are awesome people. Maybe they also have guns to defend
themselves from invading armies, and have fire-proof houses?

You are dependent on government. You can ignore your ego that actively harms
you by telling you that you aren't dependent on government. The quicker you
learn this, the better off you will be.

~~~
bobby_9x
I'm receiving services in return for the incredible amount of money, in taxes,
I pay into the system.

In reality, the government is dependent on me.

Our goal should be to encourage more people to be like me (pay more into the
system than I will ever use) so people that truly need it can use it.

Welfare and an abundance of social programs encourages just the opposite: live
on welfare and never make enough to give back into the system.

