Faculty of Management and Organization

Emergence of social constructs and organizational behaviour

How cognitive modelling enriches social simulation

Martin Helmhout, Henk W.M. Gazendam & René J.Jorna

{j.m.helmhout, h.w.m.gazendam, r.j.j.m.jorna}@rug.nl

UNICES Seminar

University of Utrecht

2

Outline

• View of the organization• Social constructs• Cognitive architecture and simulation• Types of learning• Simulating the evolution of a social construct• Discussion

View of the organization

• Organization->reductionism, organizations are actors that interact (higher level / social simulation)

• Organization -> constructivist point of viewactors have representation in their mind and in documents they use (lower level / cognitive approach)Actors are intelligent: reactive, pro-active, social, representation and autonomy.

• Environment affordances actions habits of action social constructs

Social constructs

• A relatively persistent socially shared unit of knowledge, based on intertwined habits and mutual commitments often expressed in sign structures

• Aimed at cooperation and coordination• Functions as mediator between cognitive and social

level• Types of social constructs

1) Institutional or behavioral system (community)2)Plan, model for a group3)Bilateral between two actors

Social constructs (2)

• Some Properties of social constructs1) Attached norms or rules2) Coded / tacit3) Life span4) Authority, responsibility and control5) Inheritance or prerequisite of other social constructs6) Scenario7) Context8) Roles and identification9) Grey area---->evolution---------> written (black on white)

Social constructs (3)

Social constructs, actors and context

Cognitive architecture and simulation

• Cognitive architectureboundedly rational mental representation of environment and itself

• Pro: creates actors that are not empty state machines, but have a presentation and reasoning mechanism of their own.

• Con: the architecture forces the researcher to invest into the inner workings and cognitive plausibility of the actor, thereby taking into account not alone what is happening at the social level but cognitive level as well

• CONSIDER: do I need the complexity of another level to explain my results?

Cognitive architecture and simulation

ACT-R (Anderson & Lebiere, 1998)

Three main parts:Goal stack, the goals an actorhas to solve

Procedures: reactors on goals

Declarative chunks : facts created and experienced

ACT-R and types of learning

• Declarative symbolic learning- knowledge creation : internal cognition or based on perception

• Declarative sub-symbolic learning- knowledge strengthening -> activation level- associative strength between goal and chunk

B i ln j 1n t j

d

ACT-R and types of learning

Learn

ForgetTime(t)

ACT-R and types of learning

• procedural symbolic learning- generalization and specialization of procedures(not yet implemented)

• procedural sub-symbolic learning (P = q * r)q = success ratio of direct executionr = success ratio of procedure after achieving goalq, r = successes / (successes + failures)

• Event discounting: present experiences are weighted more than past experience (forgotten)

Learning from interaction

• Extension of ACT-R : RBOT (Multi-Agent System)• Putting actors in environment makes learning from

each other behavior possible• Other actors and objects are perceived as signs and

encoded in the perception buffer of the actor• Makes interaction and learning form interaction

possible

Bringing in the social (normative) level

• Cognitive architecture is specialized in task environment for the single agent

• Adding ‘folk’ psychology (Georgeff et al. 1998)Beliefs, Desires, Intentions (BDI)

• Adding a social construct level (Mead, 1934)• Adding embodied cognition with help of subsumption

(Brooks, 1991)

Socially constructed actor (RBOT)

Beliefs

Social constructs

Desires Intentions

Declarative knowledge

Practical reasoning

Procedural knowledge

Procedures

ACT-R

Perception Action

Environment

LEVEL 1

LEVEL 0

SOCIAL ACTOR

Social constructs

Actors Objects

Simulating the evolution of a social construct

• 2D environment : actor has to decide to pass other actor left or right

• Do actors create a (tacit) social construct in which they have a preference for passing either left or right?

Simulating the evolution of a social construct

• Iterated Prisoners dilemma (IPD)game theory (reductionism)

U tility1 S

1 S F

Simulating the evolution of a social construct

• RBOT simulation shows two types of behavior1. Direct stabilization when choosing both the same strategy (left or right)2. Hopping behavior and after couple of collisions both have preference for the same strategy

• In the end, in both cases they select similar strategy and form similar preferences in their mind

Simulating the evolution of a social construct

Simulating the evolution of a social construct

Simulating the evolution of a social construct

• As an observer from the outside it seems:actors reach a certain agreement or “organization”

• Looking inside the actors we see:both developed equal cognitive map, based on interaction they reinforce each others behavior

• The social construct formed is existing out of:- 1 norm- unwritten- in this case endless lifespan- shared authority and control

Transmission of Social construct(Coordination mechanism )

PRE-Conditions• Actor A is a policeman, representing the authority• Actor B obeys and beliefs actor A • Actor A and B practice the same language (ACL)

When actor B does not follow the law of driving at the right side, actor A sends a message

This message is a social construct that functions asa coordination mechanism

Transmission of Social construct(Coordination mechanism )

Conclusion

• Social constructs can fill in a mediators role between cognition and social simulation

• Cognitive architecture gives better tuning and understanding of the model at the lower level for explaining behaviour at the higher level

• Social simulation and MAS add (social) interaction to cognitive models

http://www.acis.nl/researchdocs/index.html

DISCUSSION