Nature-Inspired Computational Model of Population Desegregation under Group Leaders Influence

This paper presents an agent-based model of population desegregation and provides a thorough analysis of the social behavior leading to it, namely, the contact hypothesis. Based on the parameters of frequency and intensity of influence of group leaders on the population, the proposed model is constituted by two layers: 1) a physical layer of the population that is influenced by and 2) a virtual layer of group leaders. The model of negotiation and survival of group leaders are governed by the nature-inspired evolutionary process of queen ants, also known as Foundress Dilemma. The motivation of using a virtual grouping concept (instead of taking a subset of population as the group leaders) is to stay focused on finding the conditions leading individuals in a society tolerating a significantly diversified (desegregated) neighborhood, rather than, indulging into complex details, which would be more relevant to studies targeting the evolution of societal group and leaders. A geographic information system-driven simulation is performed, which reveals that: 1) desegregation is directly proportional to the frequency of group leaders' contact with the population and 2) mostly, it remains ineffective with an increase in the intensity of group leaders' contact with the population. The mechanism of group selection (the conflict resolution model resolving the Foundress Dilemma) reveals an exciting result concerning negative influence of cooperative group leaders. Most of the time, desegregation decreases with increase in cooperative leaders (the leaders enforcing desegregation) when compared with fierce leaders (the leaders enforcing segregation).