Social norms for self-policing multi-agent systems and virtual societies

Article type: Other

Authors: Villatoro, Daniel

Affiliations: Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Spanish National Research Council, Bellaterra, Spain. E-mail: dvillatoro@iiia.csic.es

Abstract: The study of social norms is one of the most active topics studied by researchers from several areas such as multiagent systems, economics, or social science. Self-organizing systems have taken social norms as a mechanism that distribute the self-governance tasks to all their members. This thesis tackles the problem of analyzing the specific conditions that catalyze the imposition on a certain pre-existing norm. We have taken a cross-methodological approach where we combine theory from complex systems, agent-based social simulation, empirical laboratory experiments with humans and behavioural modelling for obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of social norms in virtual societies.

Keywords: Autonomous agents, agent based social simulation, complex systems, self-organization

DOI: 10.3233/AIC-130555

Journal: AI Communications, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 255-256, 2013