Rosaria Conte, Giulia Andrighetto, and Marco Campennl (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199812677
- eISBN:
- 9780199369553
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812677.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Models and Architectures, Cognitive Psychology
The book presents theoretical, methodological, and technical advances in the study of norms in societies of autonomous intelligent agents, based on a collaboration among social, computational, and ...
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The book presents theoretical, methodological, and technical advances in the study of norms in societies of autonomous intelligent agents, based on a collaboration among social, computational, and cognitive scientists. By conceptualizing norms as social and cognitive phenomena undergoing a complex dynamics, and thanks to a computational, agent-based approach, contributors address three sets of questions: (a) What are norms, and how may we differentiate them from social conformism on one hand and acquiescence under menace on the other? (b) How do norms emerge and change? An innovative answer is found in the interplay between the mental and social dynamics of norms. (c) How can we characterize the agents from among which norms emerge, why and how people represent norms and abide with or violate them in a non-necessarily deliberative way? Throughout the book, the surprise is that conformity is only the tip of the normative iceberg. Norms emerge in society while “immerging” into the mind. Their mental dynamics, occurring beneath the line of observation, allows all the sets of questions to be answered: a special agent architecture is needed for norm immergence, which in turn allows us to account for how norm-based behavior emerges as a special form of social regularity. After a review of different approaches, the volume presents a dynamic model of norms, the normative agent architecture, a simulation platform, and the artificial experiments testing the view of norms and the architecture proposed against a number of more or less realistic social scenarios.Less
The book presents theoretical, methodological, and technical advances in the study of norms in societies of autonomous intelligent agents, based on a collaboration among social, computational, and cognitive scientists. By conceptualizing norms as social and cognitive phenomena undergoing a complex dynamics, and thanks to a computational, agent-based approach, contributors address three sets of questions: (a) What are norms, and how may we differentiate them from social conformism on one hand and acquiescence under menace on the other? (b) How do norms emerge and change? An innovative answer is found in the interplay between the mental and social dynamics of norms. (c) How can we characterize the agents from among which norms emerge, why and how people represent norms and abide with or violate them in a non-necessarily deliberative way? Throughout the book, the surprise is that conformity is only the tip of the normative iceberg. Norms emerge in society while “immerging” into the mind. Their mental dynamics, occurring beneath the line of observation, allows all the sets of questions to be answered: a special agent architecture is needed for norm immergence, which in turn allows us to account for how norm-based behavior emerges as a special form of social regularity. After a review of different approaches, the volume presents a dynamic model of norms, the normative agent architecture, a simulation platform, and the artificial experiments testing the view of norms and the architecture proposed against a number of more or less realistic social scenarios.
Martin Neumann
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199812677
- eISBN:
- 9780199369553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812677.003.0004
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Models and Architectures, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter analyses the current state of the art in normative agent-based social simulation models. Broadly speaking, two approaches can be distinguished: on one hand, models that are inspired by ...
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This chapter analyses the current state of the art in normative agent-based social simulation models. Broadly speaking, two approaches can be distinguished: on one hand, models that are inspired by the conceptual terminology of game theory (which are inspired by the conventionalist view discussed in the introduction of this volume), and, on the other hand, models that are based on architectures of cognitive agents with roots in artificial intelligence (and are heavily influenced by the institutional view presented in the Introduction of this volume). The opportunities and drawbacks involved in these approaches are identified. The former class of models focuses on norm dynamics by strategic adaptation of agents to changing environmental conditions. The latter class provides insights into the functional effects and—to a certain degree—the cognitive processes of normative reasoning. The main deficit of both approaches is a lack of a dynamics of cognitively rich mental objects. In particular, the two-way dynamics of the emergence and immergence of norms is only barely captured.Less
This chapter analyses the current state of the art in normative agent-based social simulation models. Broadly speaking, two approaches can be distinguished: on one hand, models that are inspired by the conceptual terminology of game theory (which are inspired by the conventionalist view discussed in the introduction of this volume), and, on the other hand, models that are based on architectures of cognitive agents with roots in artificial intelligence (and are heavily influenced by the institutional view presented in the Introduction of this volume). The opportunities and drawbacks involved in these approaches are identified. The former class of models focuses on norm dynamics by strategic adaptation of agents to changing environmental conditions. The latter class provides insights into the functional effects and—to a certain degree—the cognitive processes of normative reasoning. The main deficit of both approaches is a lack of a dynamics of cognitively rich mental objects. In particular, the two-way dynamics of the emergence and immergence of norms is only barely captured.
Marco Campennì, Giulia Andrighetto, Federico Cecconi, and Rosaria Conte
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199812677
- eISBN:
- 9780199369553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812677.003.0007
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Models and Architectures, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter—which still grapples with the third question posed at the beginning of the book; i.e., how to characterize agents that are able to recognize, adopt, and comply with norms—presents and ...
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This chapter—which still grapples with the third question posed at the beginning of the book; i.e., how to characterize agents that are able to recognize, adopt, and comply with norms—presents and discusses an agent architecture, EMIL-A, implementing the model of norms introduced in the preceding chapter. The simulations presented are intended to check the roles of norm-recognition and normative beliefs in favoring norm emergence and innovation in a highly fragmented social environment. In particular, on one hand, the chapter aims to examine the performance of our normative agents compared to other, cognitively less complex, agents, like imitators following the rule of the majority. On the other hand, it aims to check whether normative systems can reach convergence even when cultural or material artifacts are obstacles to the spreading of beliefs and behaviors. Will norm-detectives succeed in finding out (new) norms? Or will convergence collapse?Less
This chapter—which still grapples with the third question posed at the beginning of the book; i.e., how to characterize agents that are able to recognize, adopt, and comply with norms—presents and discusses an agent architecture, EMIL-A, implementing the model of norms introduced in the preceding chapter. The simulations presented are intended to check the roles of norm-recognition and normative beliefs in favoring norm emergence and innovation in a highly fragmented social environment. In particular, on one hand, the chapter aims to examine the performance of our normative agents compared to other, cognitively less complex, agents, like imitators following the rule of the majority. On the other hand, it aims to check whether normative systems can reach convergence even when cultural or material artifacts are obstacles to the spreading of beliefs and behaviors. Will norm-detectives succeed in finding out (new) norms? Or will convergence collapse?
Rosaria Conte, Giulia Andrighetto, and Marco Campennì
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199812677
- eISBN:
- 9780199369553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812677.003.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Models and Architectures, Cognitive Psychology
Norms represent a most salient feature of social organization, but no common definition is available as yet, and there is a major dichotomy in the nature of norms between what is called the deontic ...
More
Norms represent a most salient feature of social organization, but no common definition is available as yet, and there is a major dichotomy in the nature of norms between what is called the deontic and the conventionalist traditions; moreover, the link between norms and sanctions is often unclear. The work presented in this volume aims to contribute to advances at the conceptual, modeling, theoretical, and operational treatment of norms. In this book, a general notion of norms as behaviors spreading over a society of agents—on condition that the corresponding prescriptions and mental representations spread as well—is proposed. A dynamic model of norms will be presented, and an operational, simulation-based version of this model will be implemented and tested by means of agent-based simulations where agents are equipped with a cognitively rich architecture (EMIL-A). Advances in the theory of norms will be shown to derive from the operational modeling of their two-way dynamics, highlighting the need for the two complementary concepts of emergence and immergence.Less
Norms represent a most salient feature of social organization, but no common definition is available as yet, and there is a major dichotomy in the nature of norms between what is called the deontic and the conventionalist traditions; moreover, the link between norms and sanctions is often unclear. The work presented in this volume aims to contribute to advances at the conceptual, modeling, theoretical, and operational treatment of norms. In this book, a general notion of norms as behaviors spreading over a society of agents—on condition that the corresponding prescriptions and mental representations spread as well—is proposed. A dynamic model of norms will be presented, and an operational, simulation-based version of this model will be implemented and tested by means of agent-based simulations where agents are equipped with a cognitively rich architecture (EMIL-A). Advances in the theory of norms will be shown to derive from the operational modeling of their two-way dynamics, highlighting the need for the two complementary concepts of emergence and immergence.
