Trusting Swarms

Idea

I got this idea thinking from Iain Couzin's lecture on collective behavior in the animal world. I believe that certain social situations can be modelled using a similar approach. More specifically, I want to examine what happens when there is a chance that every innocently-looking fellow actor is actuall a predator.

To use an animal metaphor, what happens if we have not only sheep, but also "wolves in sheep's clothing?" What if the sheep are intelligent enough to think about this likelihood and adjust their behavior accordingly? Naturally, the metaphor stops here. I am really talking about people, for whom this kind of calculation is part of every-day life.