Distributions of power

Groups often organize into roles with unequal decision power. This project studies how hierarchical structure shapes a group’s “social contract”—how resources are allocated, how autonomy is distributed, and how collective decisions are made.

Our goal is to understand how different distributions of power affect outcomes such as efficiency, fairness, and well-being. By representing possible social contracts within a unified computational framework, we can compare organizational forms and test which ones persist, spread, or converge under different institutional constraints.

What we do

• Run large-scale online experiments where groups coordinate in a resource-collection environment with asymmetric roles such as coordinator and foragers.
• Formalize social contracts along key dimensions that jointly determine resource distribution, information access, and individual autonomy.
• Use iterated-learning designs to test which organizational arrangements persist, diffuse, and converge across generations of groups.
• Manipulate which roles hold authority to modify institutional rules, allowing us to probe how decision power shapes institutional evolution.

Why it matters

Distributions of power shape virtually every collective system, from small teams and online communities to firms, governments, and scientific institutions. By identifying the structural principles that govern institutional performance and stability, this project contributes to foundational questions in collective intelligence, organizational design, and online governance. Our findings inform the design of digital platforms, cooperative systems, and human–AI organizations that balance efficiency, fairness, and autonomy.

Related publications and links

• placeholder: experimental paradigm paper
• placeholder: computational modeling paper
• placeholder: dataset and code repository