Social norms for self-policing multi-agent systems and virtual societies

Abstract

The study of social norms is one of the most active topics studied by researchers from several areas such as multiagent systems, economics, or social science. Self-organizing systems have taken social norms as a mechanism that distribute the self-governance tasks to all their members. This thesis tackles the problem of analyzing the specific conditions that catalyze the imposition on a certain pre-existing norm. We have taken a cross-methodological approach where we combine theory from complex systems, agent-based social simulation, empirical laboratory experiments with humans and behavioural modelling for obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of social norms in virtual societies.