AGENT-BASED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: FROM NEUROCOGNITIVE PROCESSES TO SOCIAL DATA

Nestor Caticha () and Renato Vicente ()
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Nestor Caticha: Departmento de Fisica Geral, Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, CP 66318, 05315-970, São Paulo - SP, Brazil
Renato Vicente: Department of Applied Mathematics, Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade de São Paulo, 05508-090, São Paulo - SP, Brazil

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2011, vol. 14, issue 05, 711-731

Abstract: Moral Foundation Theory states that groups of different observers may rely on partially dissimilar sets of moral foundations, thereby reaching different moral valuations. The use of functional imaging techniques has revealed a spectrum of cognitive styles with respect to the differential handling of novel or corroborating information that is correlated to political affiliation. Here we characterize the collective behavior of an agent-based model whose inter individual interactions due to information exchange in the form of opinions are in qualitative agreement with experimental neuroscience data. The main conclusion derived connects the existence of diversity in the cognitive strategies and statistics of the sets of moral foundations and suggests that this connection arises from interactions between agents. Thus a simple interacting agent model, whose interactions are in accord with empirical data on conformity and learning processes, presents statistical signatures consistent with moral judgment patterns of conservatives and liberals as obtained by survey studies of social psychology.

Keywords: Agent-based model; opinion dynamics; reinforcement learning; statistical mechanics; sociophysics; neurosociology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1142/S0219525911003190

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