CREativity from a SYstems perspective, Model II.

We used our model to test how different combinations of dominance interactions present in H. saltator could result in linear, despotic, or shared hierarchies.

This model simulates a foraging system based on Middle Stone Age plant and shellfish foraging in South Africa.

Agent-based models of organizational search have long investigated how exploitative and exploratory behaviors shape and affect performance on complex landscapes. To explore this further, we build a series of models where agents have different levels of expertise and cognitive capabilities, so they must rely on each other’s knowledge to navigate the landscape. Model A investigates performance results for efficient and inefficient networks. Building on Model B, it adds individual-level cognitive diversity and interaction based on knowledge similarity. Model C then explores the performance implications of coordination spaces. Results show that totally connected networks outperform both hierarchical and clustered network structures when there are clear signals to detect neighbor performance. However, this pattern is reversed when agents must rely on experiential search and follow a path-dependent exploration pattern.

Using chains of replicas of Atwood’s Machine, this model explores implications of the Maximum Power Principle. It is one of a series of models exploring the dynamics of sustainable economics – PSoup, ModEco, EiLab, OamLab, MppLab, TpLab, EiLab.

Schelling famously proposed an extremely simple but highly illustrative social mechanism to understand how strong ethnic segregation could arise in a world where individuals do not necessarily want it. Schelling’s simple computational model is the starting point for our extensions in which we build upon Wilensky’s original NetLogo implementation of this model. Our two NetLogo models can be best studied while reading our chapter “Agent-based Computational Models” (Flache and de Matos Fernandes, 2021). In the chapter, we propose 10 best practices to elucidate how agent-based models are a unique method for providing and analyzing formally precise, and empirically plausible mechanistic explanations of puzzling social phenomena, such as segregation, in the social world. Our chapter addresses in particular analytical sociologists who are new to ABMs.

In the first model (SegregationExtended), we build on Wilensky’s implementation of Schelling’s model which is available in NetLogo library (Wilensky, 1997). We considerably extend this model, allowing in particular to include larger neighborhoods and a population with four groups roughly resembling the ethnic composition of a contemporary large U.S. city. Further features added concern the possibility to include random noise, and the addition of a number of new outcome measures tuned to highlight macro-level implications of the segregation dynamics for different groups in the agent society.

In SegregationDiscreteChoice, we further modify the model incorporating in particular three new features: 1) heterogeneous preferences roughly based on empirical research categorizing agents into low, medium, and highly tolerant within each of the ethnic subgroups of the population, 2) we drop global thresholds (%-similar-wanted) and introduce instead a continuous individual-level single-peaked preference function for agents’ ideal neighborhood composition, and 3) we use a discrete choice model according to which agents probabilistically decide whether to move to a vacant spot or stay in the current spot by comparing the attractiveness of both locations based on the individual preference functions.

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A reimplementation of the Wedding Ring model by Francesco Billari. We investigate partnership formation in an agent-based framework, and combine this with statistical demographic projections using real empirical data.

We build a computational model to investigate, in an evolutionary setting, a series of questions pertaining to happiness.

This model takes concepts from a JASSS paper this is accepted for the October, 2023 edition and applies the concepts to empirical data from counties surrounding and including Cleveland Ohio. The agent-based model has a proportional number of agents in each of the counties to represent the correct proportions of adults in these counties. The adoption decision probability uses the equations from Bass (1969) as adapted by Rand & Rust (2011). It also includes the Outgroup aversion factor from Smaldino, who initially had used a different imitation model on line grid. This model uses preferential attachment network as a metaphor for social networks influencing adoption. The preferential network can be adjusted in the model to be created based on both nodes preferred due to higher rank as well as a mild preference for nodes of a like group.

Aroused public opinion has led to public debates on social responsibility issues in food supply chains. This model based op opinion dynamics and the linkages between involved actors simulates the public debate leading to the transitions.