The Deviants' Dilemma: A Simple Game in the Run-Up to Seniority

Seniority runs deep. As the saying goes for some conventions or institutions in some societies, seniority exhibits and engulfs into almost all nooks and corners of their organisations. This paper presents an analysis of the conflict between two groups in the runup to seniority in these institutions. We overview the inspirations and practice of each group, and their conflict in the run-up to organisational seniority, and analyse the conflict using a simple model of a “Deviants’ Dilemma” game played in a single population. Within the game’s framework, we analyse the conditions for the evolutionary stable state and the stability of the proportions of each group, given a strategy resulting from learning based on rewards. We also provide a short discussion on the role of noise in the system and we conclude with some discussions on the generality and possible applications of the model.