Search results for "General Social Sciences"
showing 10 items of 574 documents
A Generative Model of the Mutual Escalation of Anxiety Between Religious Groups
2018
We propose a generative agent-based model of the emergence and escalation of xenophobic anxiety in which individuals from two different religious groups encounter various hazards within an artificial society. The architecture of the model is informed by several empirically validated theories about the role of religion in intergroup conflict. Our results identify some of the conditions and mechanisms that engender the intensification of anxiety within and between religious groups. We define mutually escalating xenophobic anxiety as the increase of the average level of anxiety of the agents in both groups over time. Trace validation techniques show that the most common conditions under which …
Forecasting Changes in Religiosity and Existential Security with an Agent-Based Model
2018
We employ existing data sets and agent-based modeling to forecast changes in religiosity and existential security among a collective of individuals over time. Existential security reflects the extent of economic, socioeconomic and human development provided by society. Our model includes agents in social networks interacting with one another based on the education level of the agents, the religious practices of the agents, and each agent's existential security within their natural and social environments. The data used to inform the values and relationships among these variables is based on rigorous statistical analysis of the International Social Survey Programme Religion Module (ISSP) and…
The peer review game: an agent-based model of scientists facing resource constraints and institutional pressures
2018
This paper looks at peer review as a cooperation dilemma through a game-theory framework. We built an agent-based model to estimate how much the quality of peer review is influenced by different resource allocation strategies followed by scientists dealing with multiple tasks, i.e., publishing and reviewing. We assumed that scientists were sensitive to acceptance or rejection of their manuscripts and the fairness of peer review to which they were exposed before reviewing. We also assumed that they could be realistic or excessively over-confident about the quality of their manuscripts when reviewing. Furthermore, we assumed they could be sensitive to competitive pressures provided by the ins…
On the Macroeconomic Effect of Extortion: An Agent-Based Approach
2021
This work proposes an agent-based approach to study the effect of extortion on macroeconomic aggregates, despite the fact that there is little data on this criminal activity given its hidden nature. We develop a Bottom-up Adaptive Macroeconomics (BAM) model that simulates a healthy economy, including a moderate inflation and a reasonable unemployment rate, and test the impact of extortion on various macroeconomic signals. The BAM model defines the usual interactions among workers, firms and banks in labour, goods and credit markets. Subsequently, crime is introduced by defining the propensity of the poorest workers to become extortionists, as well as the efficiency of the police in terms of…
A Theoretical Agent-Based Model to simulate an Artificial Social Evolution
2013
Agent-based social simulation as a computational approach to social simulation has been largely used to explore social phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to build a theoretical agent-based model to simulate the social evolution of a set of agents/artificial societies. In this model, each agent (artificial society) has an available number of social behaviours that compete among each other. The agent/agent interactions are carried out by their social otherwise, the agent/environment interactions are expressed through the consumption of ecological resources in repression and satisfaction by social behaviours of the agent. In this work, we will present the structure and the formulation of …
Regional income convergence in Colombia: population, space, and long-run dynamics
2022
We examine the trajectory of regional income dynamics in Colombia. Using data on all 33 Colombian departments from 2000 to 2016, we employ extensions of (spatial) Markov chains, space-time mobility measures, along with a fully weighted version of the distribution analysis approach. By considering these extensions, our analysis enables us to answer questions such as whether the role of spatial context influences the distributional dynamics of Colombian departments, or the magnitude of the moderating effect of department’s population. The inclusion of additional measures such as the asymptotic half-life of convergence provides additional results, informing on how long it would take to reach t…
Media portrayals of transitions from work to retirement in two ageing societies : the case of ageing baby boomers in Japan and Finland
2021
This article explores media portrayals of the transition from work to retirement under the circumstances of demographic change through a focus on newspaper discussions about ageing baby boomers in Japan and Finland. Due to their shared characteristics as a distinct population group that advances the rapid ageing of the population, media representations of Japanese and Finnish baby boomers during the transitional period to retirement give insight into the social perceptions of retirement and their implications on later life. Manifest content analysis and subsequent thematic analysis identify that the topic of “work, retirement and pension” dominates media discussions in both countries. Analy…
“I do those things to pass the time.”: Active ageing during fourth age
2021
Active ageing is a dominant but disputed discourse in the field of ageing. Since it is usually associated with the third age, this article will focus on the active ageing of older adults who need care and services, who are known as the fourth agers. Our data consists of interviews collected from 16 older adults. We analysed the data through content analysis that was guided by the Active Ageing Index (AAI) that is a measuring tool concerning active ageing. According to our results, active ageing during the fourth age can be understood through the lens of small actions and precarity. Although some actions had to be given up or modified, participants were active in various ways, and help from …
The effects of personality, risk and other-regarding attitudes on trust and reciprocity
2022
Abstract This paper reports experimental results on the determinants of trust and reciprocity in the context of a genuinely sequential, binary Trust Game. Apart from behavior in the main experiment, subjects’ risk attitudes and inequality aversion are elicited, as well as the traits of neuroticism and agreeableness, captured through the five-factor model. The findings suggest that trustors’ (first movers) behavior is affected by their loss aversion, while trustees’ (second movers) reciprocal behavior is not explained by any of their other-regarding attitudes, but, rather, by their agreeableness.