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’

Contexts of diffusion: Adoption of research synthesis in Social Work and Women's Studies

Texts reveal the subjects of interest in research fields, and the values, beliefs, and practices of researchers. In this study, texts are examined through bibliometric mapping and topic modeling to provide a birds eye view of the social dynamics associated with the diffusion of research synthesis methods in the contexts of Social Work and Women's Studies. Research synthesis texts are especially revealing because the methods, which include meta-analysis and systematic review, are reliant on the availability of past research and data, sometimes idealized as objective, egalitarian approaches to research evaluation, fundamentally tied to past research practices, and performed with the goal informing future research and practice. This study highlights the co-influence of past and subsequent research within research fields; illustrates dynamics of the diffusion process; and provides insight into the cultural contexts of research in Social Work and Women's Studies. This study suggests the potential to further develop bibliometric mapping and topic modeling techniques to inform research problem selection and resource allocation.Comment: To appear in proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction (SBP2014

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

Modeling cultural change: computational models of interpersonal influence dynamics can yield new insights about how cultures change, which cultures change more rapidly than others, and why

Cultural change can occur as an emergent consequence of social influence dynamics within cultural populations. These influence dynamics are complex, and formal modeling methods-such as agent-based models-are a useful means of predicting implications for cultural change. These models may be especially useful if they not only model the psychological outcomes of interpersonal influence, but also model social network structures within a culture. When combined, these components provide a flexible modeling framework that allows other variables to also be modeled for the purposes of predicting plausible implications for cultural change. The article illustrates this approach by summarizing recent research that used these methods to model cross-cultural differences in the pace of cultural change. The article then identifies additional variables that could potentially be modeled within this conceptual framework, to produce additional insights-and additional new hypotheses-about different circumstances associated with different patterns of cultural change

Social Provisioning Process and Socio-Economic Modeling

The radical difference between orthodox and heterodox economics emanates from the different views of the capitalist socio-economic system. Economics as the science of social provisioning felicitously describes the heterodox view that economy is part of the evolving social order; social agency is embedded in the social and cultural context; a socio-economic change is driven by technical and cultural changes; and the provisioning process is open-ended. Such a perspective on economy offers ample methodological and theoretical implications for modeling the capitalist economy in a realistic manner. It lends itself especially to the micro-macro synthetic approach. Thus the objective of this paper is twofold: 1) to examine how the concept of the social provisioning process can be clarified and expanded by virtue of recent development in heterodox methodology and 2) to discuss how methodological development would nourish the heterodox modeling and theorizing of the capitalist social provisioning process.Social Provisioning, heterodox economics, social fabric matrix, system dynamics, social surplus approach

Metamimetic Games : Modeling Metadynamics in Social Cognition

Imitation is fundamental in the understanding of social system dynamics. But the diversity of imitation rules employed by modelers proves that the modeling of mimetic processes cannot avoid the traditional problem of endogenization of all the choices, including the one of the mimetic rules. Starting from the remark that human reflexive capacities are the ground for a new class of mimetic rules, I propose a formal framework, metamimetic games, that enable to endogenize the distribution of imitation rules while being human specific. The corresponding concepts of equilibrium - counterfactually stable state - and attractor are introduced. Finally, I give an interpretation of social differentiation in terms of cultural co-evolution among a set of possible motivations, which departs from the traditional view of optimization indexed to criteria that exist prior to the activity of agents.Social cognition, imitation, cultural co-evolution, differentiation, reflexivity, metacognition, stochastic game theory, endogenous distributions, metamimetic games, counterfactual equilibrium.

Metamimetic Games: Modeling Metadynamics in Social Cognition

Imitation is fundamental in the understanding of social systems' dynamics. But the diversity of imitation rules employed by modelers proves that the modeling of mimetic processes cannot avoid the traditional problem of endogenization of all the choices, including the one of the mimetic rules. Starting from the remark that metacognition and human reflexive capacities are the ground for a new class of mimetic rules, we propose a formal framework, metamimetic games, that enables to endogenize the distribution of imitation rules while being human specific. The corresponding concepts of equilibrium — counterfactually stable state — and attractor are introduced. Finally, we give an interpretation of social differenciation in terms of cultural co-evolution among a set of possible motivations, which departs from the traditional view of optimization indexed to immutable criteria that exist prior to the activity of agents.Social Cognition, Imitation, Cultural Co-Evolution, Differentiation, Reflexivity, Metacognition, Stochastic Game Theory, Endogenous Distributions, Metamimetic Games, Counterfactual Equilibrium

Conference Models to Bridge Micro and Macro Studies of Science

We propose using community-centered analyses and agent-based models of scientific gatherings such as conferences, symposia and workshops as a way to understand how scientific practices evolve and transition between local, community, and systems levels in science. We suggest using robotics as a case study of global, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary scientific practice. What is needed is a set of modeling frameworks for simulating both the internal and population dynamics of scientific gatherings. In this paper we make the case for conference models as a mid-level unit of analysis that can advance the ways scientists and citizens design systems for transferring and producing knowledge.Science of Science, Conferences, Community-Based Complex Models, Group Size, Methodology

Modeling Spatial Organization with Swarm Intelligence Processes

International audienceUrban Dynamics modeling needs to implement spatial organization emergence in order to describe the development of services evolution and their usage within spatial centers. In this paper, we propose an extension of the nest building algorithm with multi-center, multi-criteria and adaptive processes. We combine a decentralized approach based on emergent clustering mixed with spatial constraints or attractions. Typically, this model is suitable to analyse and simulate urban dynamics like the evolution of cultural equipment in urban area