23 Nov
2010
23 Nov
'10
11:23 a.m.
The next talk in the CEU Cognitive Development Center seminar series
will be given by
Francesca Giardini, Central European University
Date: Wednesday, November 24, 2010, 5 PM
Gossip and Reputation in Natural Societies and Artificial Settings
If one were to enumerate the most influential and universal social
behaviors in human societies, gossip would undoubtedly be one of them.
Exchanging social information is fundamental for partner selection,
social control, coalition formation, but it also plays a role in
social comparison and group cohesion, just to name some of its main
functions. The most frequent topics of human conversations are other
people’s reputation, actions, choices, and attitudes.
In this talk I will claim that, far from being mere idle-talk,
gossiping is a socially complex activity people intentionally engage
in because of what they believe about others and how they want others
to behave. I will then present a cognitive theory of gossip and
reputation in order to point out that choosing an addressee, selecting
the topic and deciding whether and how to give a specific information
are actions pursued according to individuals' beliefs and goals.
Finally, I will try to show the complex interplay between the
micro-level of agents' motivations and the macro-level of collective
behaviors by presenting some results from experimental studies within
the framework of Agent-Based Social Simulation (ABSS). In this
computational approach, social phenomena may emerge as a result of
interactions among heterogeneous artificial agents endowed with
internal representations of themselves, their peers and their
environment.
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