Capturing Social Embeddedness: a constructivist approach - Bruce Edmonds

1 Introduction

In the last decade there has been a lot of attention paid to the way the physical situation of a robot affects its behaviour. This paper focuses on one way in which the social situation can effect an agent. It aims to identify phenomena that may be usefully taken to indicate the extent to which agents are inextricably embedded in a society of other such agents. In particular, it aims to show this for a particular artificial simulation involving co-evolving agents. In order to do this a modelling approach is adopted which takes ideas from several varieties of constructivism.

The first section presents a brief overview of constructivism and its relevance to simulations of social agents. Then there is a section discussing the idea and possible effects of social embeddedness. A computational model illustrating differing degrees of social embeddedness is then exhibited. Both some general results and a couple of more detailed case studies are then presented. The paper ends with a short discussion of the possible causes of social embeddedness.

Capturing Social Embeddedness: a constructivist approach - Bruce Edmonds - 30 OCT 98

[Next] [Previous] [Top] [Contents]

Generated with CERN WebMaker