Conditions Facilitating the Aversion of Unpopular Norms: An Agent-Based Simulation Study

Abstract

Abstract-People mostly facilitate and manage their social lives adhering to the prevalent norms. There are some norms which are unpopular, yet people adhere to them. Ironically, people at individual level do not agree to these norms, but, they still follow and even facilitate them. Irrespective of the social and psychological reasons behind their persistence, sometimes, for societal good, it is necessary to oppose and possibly avert the unpopular norms. In this paper, we model theorydriven computational specifications of Emperor's Dilemma into an agent-based simulation, to understand the the conditions that result in emergence of unpopular norms. The reciprocal nature of persistence and aversion of norms, thus, is utilized to define situations under which these norms can be changed and averted. Simulation is performed under many interesting "what-if" questions. The simulation results reveal that under high density conditions of agent population with a high percentage of norm aversion activists, the aversion of unpopular norms can be achieved.

Agent-Based Simulation of Socially-Inspired Model of Resistance against Unpopular Norms

“…Ironically, in all cases depicted in Figure. 2, the population achieves stability always being attracted towards various fixed points. In our previous work [31], it was observed that in highly dense conditions with a large number of norm aversion ACTs, the aversion of unpopular norms can be achieved. This fact is highlighted in Figure. 3.…”

“…Though lots of work has been done on the emergence and prevalence of norms, very limited is carried out for the aversion of unpopular norms. To the best, our knowledge, our previous work [31,22,23] is the only agent-based study on this exciting research area. Willer et al have pointed out many "empirical cases in which individuals are persuaded to publicly support behaviors or beliefs that they privately question" [29].…”

“…Since, acpdb compliance in basic centolla's model is undesirable, in our previous work [31], we extended it and introduced a special kind of DBs (called Activists (ACTs)) with more desire to avert (act against) a UN. These ACTs are triggered by the presence of TBs in the surrounding, particularly who are enforcing.…”

“…After all, DBs started complying with the norm, B, a change in strategy was tested. The ACTs was activated to play their role as proposed in [31]. The extended model proposed by Zareen et al [31] reached at an equilibrium between 10 th to 12 th iteration.…”

“…The ACTs was activated to play their role as proposed in [31]. The extended model proposed by Zareen et al [31] reached at an equilibrium between 10 th to 12 th iteration. Figure 9(b) visualises the concept presented in Figure 8(a).…”