Cognitive modeling of socially transmitted affordances: a computational model of behavioral adoption tested against archival data from the Stanford Prison Experiment

Benjamin D. Nye ()
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Benjamin D. Nye: University of Pennsylvania

Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 2014, vol. 20, issue 3, No 4, 302-337

Abstract: Abstract Social learning and adoption of new affordances govern the rise of new a variety of behaviors, from actions as mundane as dance steps to those as dangerous as new ways to make improvised explosive device (IED) detonators. Traditional diffusion models and social network structures fail to adequately explain who would be likely to imitate new behavior and why some agents adopt the behavior while others do not. To address this gap, a cognitive model was designed that represents well-known socio-cognitive factors of attention, social influence, and motivation that influence learning and adoption of new behavior. This model was implemented in the Performance Moderator Function Server (PMFServ) agent-based cognitive architecture, enabling the creation of simulations where affordances spread memetically through cognitive mechanisms. This approach models facets of behavioral adoption that have not been explored by existing architectures: unintentional learning, multi-layered social and environmental attention cues, and contextual adoption. To examine the effectiveness of this model, its performance was tested against data from the Stanford Prison Experiment collected from the Archives of the History of American Psychology.

Keywords: Social learning; Affordances; Cognitive modeling; Cognitive agents; Social influence; Memes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1007/s10588-013-9162-1

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