17 Nov
2010
17 Nov
'10
2:29 p.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
Location: CEU Cognitive Development Center
Hattyú u. 14, Budapest, 3rd floor
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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