Studies on the fundamental role of diverse media in the evolution of public opinion can protect us from the spreading brainwashing, extremism, and terrorism. Many fear the information cocoon may result in polarization of the public opinion. The model of opinion dynamics that considers different influences and horizons for every individual, and the simulations are based on a real-world social network.

This model allows for analyzing the most efficient levers for enhancing the use of recycled construction materials, and the role of empirically based decision parameters.

A spatial prisoner’s dilemma model with mobile agents, de-coupled birth-death events, and harsh environments.

We introduce a model of prediction markets that uses opinion dynamics as its underlying mechanism for price formation. We base the opinion dynamics on the Deffuant model of bounded rationality. We have used this model to show that price formation in prediction markets can be robustly explained by opinion dynamics, and that the model can also explain phase transitions depending on just two parameters.

An agent-based model which explores Creativity and Urban Development

We built an agent-based model to foster the understanding of homeowners’ insulation activity.

This model extends the original Artifical Anasazi (AA) model to include individual agents, who vary in age and sex, and are aggregated into households. This allows more realistic simulations of population dynamics within the Long House Valley of Arizona from AD 800 to 1350 than are possible in the original model. The parts of this model that are directly derived from the AA model are based on Janssen’s 1999 Netlogo implementation of the model; the code for all extensions and adaptations in the model described here (the Artificial Long House Valley (ALHV) model) have been written by the authors. The AA model included only ideal and homogeneous “individuals” who do not participate in the population processes (e.g., birth and death)–these processes were assumed to act on entire households only. The ALHV model incorporates actual individual agents and all demographic processes affect these individuals. Individuals are aggregated into households that participate in annual agricultural and demographic cycles. Thus, the ALHV model is a combination of individual processes (birth and death) and household-level processes (e.g., finding suitable agriculture plots).

As is the case for the AA model, the ALHV model makes use of detailed archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from the Long House Valley and the adjacent areas in Arizona. It also uses the same methods as the original model (from Janssen’s Netlogo implementation) to estimate annual maize productivity of various agricultural zones within the valley. These estimates are used to determine suitable locations for households and farms during each year of the simulation.

The intention of this model is to create an universal basis on how to model change in value prioritizations within social simulation. This model illustrates the designing of heterogeneous populations within agent-based social simulations by equipping agents with Dynamic Value-based Cognitive Architectures (DVCA-model). The DVCA-model uses the psychological theories on values by Schwartz (2012) and character traits by McCrae and Costa (2008) to create an unique trait- and value prioritization system for each individual. Furthermore, the DVCA-model simulates the impact of both social persuasion and life-events (e.g. information, experience) on the value systems of individuals by introducing the innovative concept of perception thermometers. Perception thermometers, controlled by the character traits, operate as buffers between the internal value prioritizations of agents and their external interactions. By introducing the concept of perception thermometers, the DVCA-model allows to study the dynamics of individual value prioritizations under a variety of internal and external perturbations over extensive time periods. Possible applications are the use of the DVCA-model within artificial sociality, opinion dynamics, social learning modelling, behavior selection algorithms and social-economic modelling.

The model is used to study the conditions under which agents will cooperate in one-shot two-player Prisoner’s Dilemma games if they are able to withdraw from playing the game and can learn to recogniz

This model can be used to explore under which conditions agents behave as observed in field experiments on irrigation games.