Socio-thermodynamics — integration and segregation in a population

Abstract

A population of metaphorical hawks and doves, competing for the same resource is a well-known model of game theory characterized by a certain contest strategy. This model is modified here by making rewards and penalties dependent on the prevailing price level. Also a second strategy is invented which the hawks and doves may choose or not depending on which strategy provides a higher gain.

It turns out that at intermediate and high price levels the population will not achieve maximum gain, if hawks and doves remain homogeneously mixed. Rather they will partly or even fully segregate to maximize their gain. The ideas presented here are extrapolations of thermodynamics of binary mixtures whose components may mix at high temperature while at low temperature they exhibit miscibility gaps.