Social & Behavioral Simulation

Track Coordinators: Ugo Merlone, University of Torino & Stephen Davies, University of Mary Washington

Computer simulation is increasingly being adopted as a technique for achieving results in the social sciences. Formalized models enable a generative approach to science that can identify which kinds of micro-level interactions are sufficient to produce the known macro-level patterns observed in real societies. Simulation also allows social science researchers to explore out-of-equilibrium system behavior that is difficult to achieve with traditional analytical approaches.

The Social and Behavioral Simulation track will feature recent, principled work in this area. Projects related to all areas of the social and behavioral sciences will be represented, from artificial economics and cognitive process modeling to social network analysis and political science. We invite innovative and state-of-the-art contributions that model complex phenomena in any social sphere, and especially encourage implementations and demonstration of results.

Applications submitted to this track may be from various domains, including but not limited to:

• Anthropology
• Sociology
• Multi-agent modeling
• Game theory
• Simulation and gaming
• Computational economics
• Social network analysis
• Political science
• Cognitive sciences
• Computational social psychology
• Social policy
• Decision support and analytics
• Group dynamics