How to use fitness landscape models for the analysis of collective decision-making: a case of theory-transfer and its limitations

Abstract

There is considerable correspondence between theories and models used in biology and the social sciences. One type of model that is in use in both biology and the social sciences is the fitness landscape model. The properties of the fitness landscape model have been applied rather freely in the social domain. This is partly due to the versatility of the model, but it is also due to the difficulties of transferring a model to another domain. We will demonstrate that in order to transfer the biological fitness landscape model to the social science it needs to be substantially modified. We argue that the syntactic structure of the model can remain unaltered, whilst the semantic dimension requires considerable modification in order to fit the specific phenomena in the social sciences. We will first discuss the origin as well as the basic properties of the model. Subsequently, we will demonstrate the considerations and modifications pertaining to such a transfer by showing how and why we altered the model to analyse collective decision-making processes. We will demonstrate that the properties of the target domain allow for a transfer of the syntactic structure but don’t tolerate the semantic transfer.

Traveling between worlds: repositioning methods and theory for research into coupled socio-ecological systems

“…The second movement, then, takes place between source domain and target domain (Marks et al 2019), here to be understood as a movement between ecological systems and social systems. Two knowledge transfers are possible.…”

“…Here, certain properties of the original theoretical model may be retained but others may have to be modified because of the specific properties of the target domain (e.g. to account for social action, see Marks et al 2019).…”

“…the set of causal mechanisms represented) and the semantic structure (i.e. the vocabulary or conceptual language used to represent the object of interest) (Marks et al 2019). The target domain is addressed by finding functional equivalents to the both structures of the original model.…”

“…In the social sciences, the term 'model' is applied in a broader sense than in Weisberg's examples for developing the above described distinction. I followMarks et al (2019) who regard models as the theoretical apparatus employed in social sciences.…”

UN-CODE: Software for Structuring and Visualizing Collective Decision-Making Based on Qualitative Data

“…The approach is based on the adaptive fields and subsequent iterations in the form of fitness landscapes from evolutionary biology. Readers interested in the background of this approach are kindly referred to [1,6,7].…”