From Factors to Actors: Computational Sociology and Agent-Based Modeling

▪ Abstract Sociologists often model social processes as interactions among variables. We review an alternative approach that models social life as interactions among adaptive agents who influence one another in response to the influence they receive. These agent-based models (ABMs) show how simple and predictable local interactions can generate familiar but enigmatic global patterns, such as the diffusion of information, emergence of norms, coordination of conventions, or participation in collective action. Emergent social patterns can also appear unexpectedly and then just as dramatically transform or disappear, as happens in revolutions, market crashes, fads, and feeding frenzies. ABMs provide theoretical…

• NS
  National Science Foundation