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, 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 view actors 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 group 3)Bilateral between two actors

Social constructs (2) Some Properties of social constructs 1)Attached norms or rules 2)Coded / tacit 3)Life span 4)Authority, responsibility and control 5)Inheritance or prerequisite of other social constructs 6)Scenario 7)Context 8)Roles and identification 9)Grey area---->evolution > written (black on white)

Social constructs (3) Social constructs, actors and context

Cognitive architecture and simulation Cognitive architecture boundedly 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 actor has 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

ACT-R and types of learning Learn Forget Time(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 execution r = success ratio of procedure after achieving goal q, 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)

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)

Simulating the evolution of a social construct RBOT simulation shows two types of behavior 1. 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

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 as a 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

DISCUSSION