Social simulation - Knowledge

446:(ABM) is a system in which a collection of agents independently interact on networks. Each individual agent is responsible for different behaviors that result in collective behaviors. These behaviors as a whole help to define the workings of the network. ABM focuses on human social interactions and how people work together and communicate with one another without having one, single "group mind". This essentially means that it tends to focus on the consequences of interactions between people (the agents) in a population. Researchers are better able to understand this type of modeling by modeling these dynamics on a smaller, more localized level. Essentially, ABM helps to better understand interactions between people (agents) who, in turn, influence one another (in response to these influences). Simple individual rules or actions can result in coherent 420:

complex, depending on the need for either; however, models are intended to be simpler than what they are representing while remaining realistically similar in order to be used accurately. They are built using a collection of data that is translated into computing languages that allow them to represent the system in question. These models, much like simulations, are used to help us better understand specific roles and actions of different things so as to predict behavior and the like.

486:"New and Emergent World Models Through Individual, Evolutionary and Social Learning" or (New Ties) is a three-year project that will ultimately create a virtual society developed by agent-based simulation. The project will develop a simulated society capable of exploring the environment and developing its own image of this environment and the society through interaction. The goal of the research project is for the simulated society to exhibit 431:(ABSS) consists of modeling different societies after artificial agents, (varying on scale) and placing them in a computer simulated society to observe the behaviors of the agents. From this data it is possible to learn about the reactions of the artificial agents and translate them into the results of non-artificial agents and simulations. Three main fields in ABSS are agent-based computing, social science, and computer simulation. 514:

comfortable they would feel with different situations; if they were okay with one situation, they asked another until the neighborhood was fully integrated. Bruch and Mare's results showed that the tipping point was at 50%. When a neighborhood became 50% minority and 50% white, people of both races began to become uncomfortable and

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theorized. The main purpose of ABSS is to provide models and tools for agent-based simulation of social phenomena. With ABSS we can explore different outcomes for phenomena where we might not be able to view the outcome in real life. It can provide us valuable information on society and the outcomes of social events or phenomena.

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Since its creation, computerized social simulation has been the target of some criticism in regard to its practicality and accuracy. Social simulation's simplification of the complex to form models from which we can better understand the latter is sometimes seen as a draw back, as using fairly simple

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Agent-based modeling is an experimental tool for theoretical research. It enables one to deal with more complex individual behaviors, such as adaptation. Overall, through this type of modeling, the creator, or researcher, aims to model behavior of agents and the communication between them in order to

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A model is a representation of a specific thing ranging from objects and people to structures and products created through mathematical equations and are designed, using computers, in such a way that they are able to stand-in as the aforementioned things in a study. Models can be either simplistic or

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System level modeling (SLM) aims to specifically predict (unlike system level simulation's generalization in prediction) and convey any number of actions, behaviors, or other theoretical possibilities of nearly any person, object, construct et cetera within a system using a large set of mathematical

472:"Network Models Governance and R&D collaboration networks" or (N.E.M.O) is a research centre whose main focus is to identify ways to create and to assess desirable network structures for typical functions; (e.g. knowledge, creation, transfer, and distribution.) This research will ultimately aid 530:

The Mosi-Agil project is a four-year program funded by the Autonomous Region of Madrid through the program MOSI-AGIL-CM (grant S2013/ICE-3019, co-funded by EU Structural Funds FSE and FEDER). It aims at creating a body of knowledge and practical tools which are necessary to handle more effectively

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or selection pressures. Agents may start out undifferentiated and then change location or behavior so as to avoid becoming different or isolated (or in some cases, overcrowded). Rather than producing homogeneity, however, these conformist decisions aggregate to produce global patterns of cultural

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Agent-based modeling is most useful in providing a bridge between micro and macro levels, which is a large part of what sociology studies. Agent-based models are most appropriate for studying processes that lack central coordination, including the emergence of institutions that, once established,

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or when people become uncomfortable with the integration levels into their neighborhood, and decide to flee from the neighborhood. They set up a model using flash cards, and put the agent's house in the middle and put houses of different races surrounding the agent's house. They asked people how

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differentiation, stratification, and homophilic clustering in local networks. Other studies reverse the process, starting with a heterogeneous population and ending in convergence: the coordination, diffusion, and sudden collapse of norms, conventions, innovations, and technological standards."

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The MAELIA Program (Multi-Agent Emergent Norms Assessment) is a project dealing with the relationships between the users and managers of a natural resource, in that case water, and the related norms and laws that are to be built within them (conventions) or are imposed to them by other actors

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System Level Simulation (SLS) is the oldest level of social simulation. System level simulation looks at the situation as a whole. This theoretical outlook on social situations uses a wide range of information to determine what should happen to society and its members if certain variables are

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regards social simulation as a third way of doing science, differing from both the deductive and inductive approach; generating data that can be analysed inductively, but coming from a rigorously specified set of rules rather than from direct measurement of the real world. Thus, simulating a

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Simulations cannot enlighten researchers as to how people interact or behave in ways not programmed into their models. For this reason, the scope of simulations are limited in that the researchers must already know what they are going to find (to a degree, for they cannot find anything they

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Agent-based computing is the design of the model and agents, while the computer simulation is the part of the simulation of the agents in the model and the outcomes. The social science is a mixture of sciences and social part of the model. It is where the social phenomena is developed and

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present. Therefore, with specific variables presented, society and its members should have a certain response to the new situation. Navigating through this theoretical simulation will allow researchers to develop educated ideas of what will happen under some specific variables.

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These examples simply show the complexity of our environment and that agent-based models are designed to explore the minimal conditions, the simplest set of assumptions about human behavior, required for a given social phenomenon to emerge at a higher level of organization.

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adaptation can lead to successful collective action without either altruism or global (top down) imposition of control. A key finding across numerous studies is that the viability of trust, cooperation, and collective action depends decisively on the embeddedness of

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were to conduct a system level simulation it would benefit the organization by providing a cost-effective research method to navigate through the simulation. This allows the researcher to steer through the virtual possibilities of the given simulation and develop

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are far simpler than those achieved through simulation and therefore suffer the aforementioned drawbacks much more strongly. Theories in some social science tend to be linear models that are not dynamic, and are generally inferred from small laboratory

479:"Agent-based Simulations of Market and Consumer Behavior" is another research group that is funded by the Unilever Corporate Research. The current research that is being conducted is investigating the usefulness of agent-based simulations for modeling 72:

Social simulation aims to cross the gap between the descriptive approach used in the social sciences and the formal approach used in the natural sciences, by moving the focus on the processes/mechanisms/behaviors that build the social reality.

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published "Computational Organizational Science and Organizational Engineering" defining the movement of simulation into organizations, established a journal for social simulation applied to organizations and complex socio-technical systems:

634:(laboratory tests are most common in psychology but rare in sociology, political science, economics and geography). The behavior of populations of agents under these models is rarely tested or verified against empirical observation. 313:

Social simulation can refer to a general class of strategies for understanding social dynamics using computers to simulate social systems. Social simulation allows for a more systematic way of viewing the possibilities of outcomes.

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began to rise. The use of agent-based modeling showed how useful it can be in the world of sociology, people did not have to answer why they would become uncomfortable, just which situation they were uncomfortable

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Due to the complexities of what is being measured, simulations must be analyzed in unbiased ways; however, with the model running on a pre-made set of instructions coded into it by a modeler, biases exist almost

132:, also a mathematician; Ulam suggested that the machine be built on paper, as a collection of cells on a grid. The idea intrigued von Neumann, who drew it up—creating the first of devices later termed 531:

the behavior of occupants of large facilities. Therefore, the project studies the development of ambient intelligence and intelligent environments supported by the use of Agent-Based Social Simulation.

466:"Generative e-Social Science for Socio-Spatial Simulation" or (GENESIS) is a research node of the UK National Centre for e-Social Science funded by the UK research council ESRC. 536:

impose order from the top down. The models focus on how simple and predictable local interactions generate familiar but highly detailed global patterns, such as emergence of

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It is highly difficult and often impractical to attempt to link the findings from the abstract world the simulation creates and our complex society and all of its variation.

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of collective action. Michael W. Macy and Robert Willer researched a recent survey of applications and found that there were two main problems with agent-based modeling the

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Hughes, H. P. N.; Clegg, C. W.; Robinson, M. A.; Crowder, R. M. (2012). "Agent-based modelling and simulation: The potential contribution to organizational psychology".

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Crowder, R. M.; Robinson, M. A.; Hughes, H. P. N.; Sim, Y. W. (2012). "The development of an agent-based modeling framework for simulating engineering team work".

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better understand how these individual interactions impact an entire population. In essence, ABM is a way of modeling and understanding different global patterns.

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There are several current research projects that relate directly to modeling and agent-based simulation the following are listed below with a brief overview.

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at all political levels in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of network-based policy instruments at promoting the knowledge economy in Europe.

188: 358:, the interaction among these agents, and the effect of these interactions on the social aggregate. Although the subject matter and methodologies in 290:), and compared the statistical regularities of the simulation with empirical observations of voter behavior; others have compared delegation methods. 1337: 76:

In social simulation, computers support human reasoning activities by executing these mechanisms. This field explores the simulation of societies as

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Hadzibeganovic, Tarik; Stauffer, Dietrich; Schulze, Christian (2008), "Boundary effects in a three-state modified voter model for languages",

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proposed would follow precisely detailed instructions to fashion a copy of itself. The concept was then improved by von Neumann's friend

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the first textbook on social simulation: "Simulation for the Social Scientist" (1999) and established its most relevant journal: the

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The birth of the agent-based model as a model for social systems was primarily brought about by a computer scientist,

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The social simulation approach to the social sciences is promoted and coordinated by four regional associations, the

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has used simulations to investigate the foundation of morality; others have modeled the emergence of norms using

748:"A multi-agent simulation platform for modeling perfectly rational and bounded-rational agents in organizations" 1287:

When One Decides for Many: The Effect of Delegation Methods on Cooperation in Simulated Inter-group Conflicts

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phenomenon is akin to generating it—constructing artificial societies. These ambitious aims have encountered

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Between Replication and Docking: "Adaptive Agents, Political Institutions, and Civic Traditions" Revisited

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Carley, Kathleen M. (2002), "Computational organizational science and organizational engineering",

653: 144: 121: 1018: 469:"National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation" or (NeISS) is a UK-based project funded by JISC. 346:

to analyze social phenomena. The basic premise of computational sociology is to take advantage of

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Silverman, Eric; Bryden, John (2007), "From Artificial Societies to New Social Science Theory",

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Most of the criticism seems to be aimed at agent-based models and simulation and how they work:

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Christian Hahn, Bettina Fley, Michael Florian, Daniela Spresny and Klaus Fischer (2007) :

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and to show the potential value and insights it can add to long-established marketing methods.

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Researchers working in social simulation might respond that the competing theories from the

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models to simulate real life with computers is not always the best way to predict behavior.

450:. Changes in these individual acts can affect the collective group in any given population. 1067: 845: 443: 269:(image, social esteem, and prestige) and observing their behavior in a virtual marketplace. 212:

developed methods for basing agent-based simulation on models of human cognition, known as

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themselves did not place in the model) at least vaguely, possibly skewing the results.

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procedures, and to produce proven facts about how a certain situation will play out. (

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Introducing Emotions into the Computational Study of Social Norms: A First Evaluation

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in a far too simple manner in regard to the complexities of humanity and our actions.

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The Origin of Institutions: socio-economic processes, choice, norms and conventions

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Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction: From Cognitive Modeling to Social Simulation

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and the social process of science: there is a special section on that topic in the

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Social Reputation: a Mechanism for Flexible Self-Regulation of Multiagent Systems

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A Model of Political Judgment: An Agent-Based Simulation of Candidate Evaluation

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IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans

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an-Asian Association for Agent-based Approach in Social Systems Sciences (PAAA)

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CASOS - Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems

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Here are some sample topics that have been explored with social simulation:

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Research field that applies to methods of studying issues in social science

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JASSS vol. 14: Special section: Simulating the Social Processes of Science

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Sylvan, Donald A. (1998), "Modeling the rise and fall of states",

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Simulations, being man-made from mathematical interfaces, predict

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JASSS - The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation

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Defense Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis: Meeting the Challenge

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CSSSA - The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas

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Takahashi, Shingo; Sallach, David; Rouchier, Juliette (2007),

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Homo Socionicus: a Case Study of Simulation Models of Norms

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Computational Social Science Society of the Americas (CSSS)

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Macy, M. W.; Willer, R. (2002), "From Factors to Actors",

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equations and computer programming in the form of models.

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Marie-Edith Bissey, Mauro Carini and Guido Ortona (2004)

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ALEX3, a Simulation Program to Compare Electoral Systems

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Dan Miodownik, Britt Cartrite and Ravi Bhavnani (2010):

1142: 891: 781:"Multi Agent Based Simulation: Beyond Social Simulation" 370:, several of the approaches used in contemporary social 105: 66: 1191:

Modelling the Emergence of Possession Norms using Memes

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Felix Flentge, Daniel Polani and Thomas Uthmann (2001)

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Stauffer, Dietrich (2003), "Sociophysics simulations",

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Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology

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Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress

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