On the Strategic Allocation of Social Gratification

Members of social networks are given op-portunities to bestow positive recognition upon one another by means of constructs such as “likes ” and “retweets. ” Although recipi-ents no doubt experience utility from these actions, one might question why these con-structs with no intrinsic value for the sender are exchanged at all. Here we formulate a metric for the prestige of a member of a so-cial network based on his or her place within the network and the rate at which “likes ” are exchanged within his or her social circle. Sim-ulation reveals that the 1 % most strategically-optimized networks exchange likes at an aver-age rate 23.5 % higher than that of their ran-dom counterparts. This suggests that purely strategic agents, even with no concern for al-truism or the general welfare, experience util-ity from giving social gratification. Further, we show that prestige-maximization creates a selective pressure for structural features asso-ciated with social networks including cluster-ing and the small-world property