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speed of the concepts. It could even cause the weakening of some concepts among
certain members of the group. To simulate this aspect of our theory, each agent has an
interaction probability with the rest of the agents. Taking into account computational
restrictions, those probabilities take only discrete values (0.08, 0.11, 0.17, 0.26 and
0.38, probabilities which increase by approximately 50% between successive values).
At the start of a simulation run, all the agents are assigned a probability equal to 0.08,
which means that an agent will randomly interact with any other agent. Then, as the
run advances, if agent A confirms O's concept, agent O will increase its interaction
probability with A to the immediately larger value. For example, if agent A's
interaction probability was 0.08, then agent A will increase that probability to 0.11.
A last aspect incorporated in the ABM is that in a social group, it might exist more
than one version of a concept. Thus, the model allows setting the number of versions
that will be present in a group between 1 and 5. Each version will be assigned to a
number of agents equal to the total number of agents in a group divided by the
number of versions.
Each agent O determines whether its concept will strengthen or weaken according
to the following rules:
a)
If A acts according to its own concept in the focal set, and A's conceptual content
completely coincides with O's conceptual content, then O's concept will strengthen
with probability equal to 1.
b)
If A acts according to its own concept in the focal set, and that concept is a version
of the same concept in O's focal set (but not identical), then O's concept will
strengthen with probability equal to
p(a1)
and will weaken with probability equal to
1
-
p(a1)
.
c)
If A does not act according to its concept in the focal set (i.e., acts according to a
contrasting concept), and the contrasting concept overlaps somewhat with the O's
concept in the focal set, then O's concept will strengthen with probability equal to
p(a2)
and will weaken with probability equal to
1 -
p(a2)
.
d)
If A does not act according to its concept in the focal set (i.e., acts according to a
contrasting concept), and A's conceptual content completely coincides with O's
conceptual content, then O's concept will weaken with probability equal to 1.
Finally, each simulation cycle or step of the ABM is composed of the following
actions:
i)
From the set of all agents, randomly select without replacement an observer agent
(O).
ii)
O selects one actor agent (A), according to the interaction probabilities that O has
for the rest of the agents.
iii)
A behaves according to its concept with probability equal to the value of the
coefficient of the concept that it has.
iv)
O observes that behaviour and modifies its coefficient of the concept, according to
the rules that were previously described.
v)
Repeat steps i) through iv) until all agents have been observers.
