Wonderful!! A real simulation issue.
> Warren Thorngate wrote
>
> >How about suggesting that MABS folk make more use of what
> >psychologists and social psychologists and sociologists know from
> >experiment and observation about human behaviour in filling their models
> >with assumptions?
I guess we all wish that people would read our own work more, so please
forgive a
little self-advertisement. I argued something very like this point in
my MABS-98
paper on validating and verifying our models. One of my conclusions
(buttressed
by examples) was that verification with respect to observationally and
experimentally well validated results from cognitive science or social
psychology
increases confidence in our models.
> Example: rather than running MABS under the
> >simple-to-programme assumption that every agent has the same motives,
> >skills, knowledge, etc. -- which 100+ years of research in the social
> >sciences has shown to be false -- how about building in human variability
> >in all such constructs? This might help to constrain the exponential
> >growth in MABS simulations.
Apart from economists, I can't really think of anyone -- at least in the
European
social simulation community -- who assumes that agents have "the same
motives,
skill, knowledge, etc." Perhaps Warren has some examples of models
based on such
assumptions, but I believe that a leitmotif of ABSS is the investigation
of how
motives, skill and knowledge are changed or perhaps reinforced by
interaction
among individuals and by the properties of the social system that emerge
from
such interaction.
I don't know about 100+ years of research in the social sciences, but
certainly
the past 50+ years of social psychology appears to have confirmed by
extensive
observation and experimentation that we are attracted to those whose
attitudes we
share and we tend to share the attitudes of those to whom we are
attracted. (35
years ago, this was called the consistency principle -- is it still?)
Trying to
capture that phenomenon in a variety of contexts has generated outcomes
at the
system level that correspond well to observed data. The social
contexts being
modelled were firm behaviour in the Russian Federation in the early
1990s, the
survival of intermediaries (e.g. brokers) in markets with various
properties and
changing demands for water in response to exhortation by public
authorities
during conditions of drought.
In all of these cases, the behaviour of individual agents tended to
converge
though it never became identical. This result seems plausible to me and
is
certainly open to empirical (dis)confirmation.
So, like Rosaria, I agree with Warren that we should be relying on well
validated
principles (as distinct from abstract and unvalidated theory) from the
cognate
disciplines such as social psychology, sociology, etc. But I also argue
that
that is only half the story. Our results should themselves be validated
against
qualitative expertise and numerical data.
Rosaria wrote:
> One last comment about variability and abstraction. As I said, I am
> strongly convinced that the sameness assumption is wrong if we refer
> to the agents' motives, beliefs, etc.. However, I also think that
> there are important uniformities in the way agents work, learn, form
> representations, and decide upon them. A general theory of these
> aspects of agency, together with a general theory of social processes
> is necessary to make predictions from the social processes to the
> agents' minds, which in my view is the only way to have theory-based
> modelling of social matters.
While I believe there to be work in social psychology suggesting agent
specifications that achieve such "important uniformities in the way
agents work,
learn ....", I do not understand why "a general theory of these aspects
of
agency, together with a general theory of social processes is necessary
to make
predictions from the social processes to the agents' minds".
--
Professor Scott Moss
Director
Centre for Policy Modelling
Manchester Metropolitan University
Aytoun Building
Manchester M1 3GH
UNITED KINGDOM
telephone: +44 (0)161 247 3886
fax: +44 (0)161 247 6802
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/~scott
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