Modeling Cultural Dynamics

EVOC (for EVOlution of Culture) is a computer model of culture that enables us to investigate how various factors such as barriers to cultural diffusion, the presence and choice of leaders, or changes in the ratio of innovation to imitation affect the diversity and effectiveness of ideas. It consists of neural network based agents that invent ideas for actions, and imitate neighbors’ actions. The model is based on a theory of culture according to which what evolves through culture is not memes or artifacts, but the internal models of the world that give rise to them, and they evolve not through a Darwinian process of competitive exclusion but a Lamarckian process involving exchange of innovation protocols. EVOC shows an increase in mean fitness of actions over time, and an increase and then decrease in the diversity of actions. Diversity of actions is positively correlated with population size and density, and with barriers between populations. Slowly eroding borders increase fitness without sacrificing diversity by fostering specialization followed by sharing of fit actions. Introducing a leader that broadcasts its actions throughout the population increases the fitness of actions but reduces diversity of actions. Increasing the number of leaders reduces this effect. Efforts are underway to simulate the conditions under which an agent immigrating from one culture to another contributes new ideas while still ‘fitting in’

An Agent-based Simulation of the Effectiveness of Creative Leadership\ud

This paper investigates the effectiveness of creative versus\ud uncreative leadership using EVOC, an agent-based model of\ud cultural evolution. Each iteration, each agent in the artificial society invents a new action, or imitates a neighbor’s action. Only the leader’s actions can be imitated by all other agents, referred to as followers. Two measures of creativity were used: (1) invention-to-imitation ratio, iLeader, which measures how often an agent invents, and (2) rate of conceptual change, cLeader, which measures how creative an invention is. High iLeader increased mean fitness of ideas, but only when creativity of followers was low. High iLeader was associated with greater diversity of ideas in the early stage of idea generation only. High Leader increased mean fitness of ideas in the early stage of idea generation; in the later stage it decreased idea fitness. Reasons for these findings and tentative implications for creative leadership in human society are discussed

How Creative Should Creators be to Optimize the Evolution of Ideas? A Computer Model

There are both benefits and drawbacks to creativity. In a social group it is not necessary for all members to be creative to benefit from creativity; some merely imitate or enjoy the fruits of others' creative efforts. What proportion should be creative? This paper outlines investigations of this question carried out using a computer model of cultural evolution referred to as EVOC (for EVOlution of Culture). EVOC is composed of neural network based agents that evolve fitter ideas for actions by (1) inventing new ideas through modification of existing ones, and (2) imitating neighbors' ideas. The ideal proportion with respect to fitness of ideas is found to depend on the level of creativity of the creative agents. For all levels or creativity, the diversity of ideas in a population is positively correlated with the ratio of creative agents

A Virtual Laboratory for the Study of History and Cultural Dynamics

This article presents a Virtual Laboratory that enables the researcher to try hypothesis and confirm data analysis about different historical processes and cultural dynamics. This Virtual Cultural Laboratory (VCL) is developed using agent-based modeling technology. Individuals' tendencies and preferences as well as the behavior of cultural objects in the transformation of cultural information are taken into consideration. In addition, the effect of local interactions at different scales over time and space is visualized through the VCL interface. Information repositories, cultural items, borders, population size, individual' tendencies and other features are determined by the user. Finally, the researcher can also isolate specific factors whose effect on the global system might be of interest to the researcher. All the code can be found at http://projects.cultureplex.ca/Cultural Dynamics, Cultural Complexity, Multi-Agent Based Simulation, Netlogo, Virtual Laboratory