Leadership in Small Societies

Multi-agent simulation was used to study several styles of leadership in small societies. Populations of 50 and100 agents inhabited a bounded landscape containing a fixed number of food sources. Agents moved about the landscape in search of food, mated, produced offspring, and died either of hunger or at a predetermined maximum age. Leadership models focused on the collection and redistribution of food. The simulations suggest that individual households were more effective at meeting their needs than a simple collection-redistribution scheme. Leadership affected the normative makeup of the population: altruistic leaders caused altruistic societies and demanding leaders caused aggressive societies. Specific leadership styles did not provide a clear advantage when two groups competed for the same resources. The simulation results are compared to ethnographic observations of leadership in Pacific island societies.

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