Social Norm Emergence in Virtual Agent Societies

Social norm emergence is commonly explained by stating that norms serve certain functions – for example, solving cooperation or coordination problems. But critics argue that examples of norms that do not seem to serve functions show that functions cannot explain social norms. However, both sides tend to make assumptions about how explanations of social norms in terms of functions would work. By discussing four problems for these assumptions, I will show that they are over-simplified. Instead of asking whether norms serve functions, we need to ask more specific questions about the relationship between the norm and the function it supposedly serves.

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Norm Emergence in Multi-Agent Societies

Intelligence Integration in Distributed Knowledge Management ◽

10.4018/978-1-59904-576-4.ch012 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 195-206

Author(s):

Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu ◽

Maryam Purvis ◽

Stephen Cranefield

Keyword(s):

Software Agents ◽

Experimental Results ◽

Multi Agent System ◽

Artificial Agent ◽

Agent System ◽

Agent Societies ◽

Multi Agent ◽

Norm Emergence

Norms are shared expectations of behaviours that exist in human societies. Norms help societies by increasing the predictability of individual behaviours and by improving cooperation and collaboration among members. Norms have been of interest to multi-agent system researchers, as software agents intend to follow certain norms. But, owing to their autonomy, agents sometimes violate norms, which needs monitoring. In order to build robust MAS that are norm compliant and systems that evolve and adapt norms dynamically, the study of norms is crucial. Our objective in this chapter is to propose a mechanism for norm emergence in artificial agent societies and provide experimental results. We also study the role of autonomy and visibility threshold of an agent in the context of norm emergence.

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Norm emergence in multiagent systems: a viewpoint paper

Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems ◽

10.1007/s10458-019-09422-0 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 33 (6) ◽

pp. 706-749

Author(s):

Andreasa Morris-Martin ◽

Marina De Vos ◽

Julian Padget

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle ◽

Multiagent Systems ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Agent Societies ◽

Challenges And Opportunities ◽

Similarities And Differences ◽

Norm Emergence ◽

Future Topics

Abstract Norms are utilised in agent societies to encourage acceptable behaviour by the participating agents. They can be established or revised from the top-down (authority) or from the bottom-up (populace). The study of norm creation from the bottom-up—or norm emergence/convergence—shows evidence of increasing activity. In consequence, we seek to analyse and categorize the approaches proposed in the literature for facilitating norm emergence. This paper makes three contributions to the study of norm emergence. Firstly, we present the different perspectives of norms and their impact on the norm emergence process, with the aim of comparing their similarities and differences in implementing the norm life cycle. Secondly, we identify the characteristics that support norm emergence that are observed in the emergence literature. Finally, we identify and propose future topics for study for the community, through a discussion of the challenges and opportunities in norm emergence.

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