Abstract

Modern human societies give rise to the expression of complex group dynamics between the members of said society due to the abundance of continued interactions. Of particular interest are how institutions affect these interactions between societal members, alter the resulting group dynamics, and impact society as a whole through their rules. Simulating these dynamics allows for greater insight into how these institutions function and allows researchers to pose interesting questions and test hypotheses within a laboratory setting. We present a novel approach to simulating institutions, particularly governments, within a networked society. This approach builds upon the Junior High Game, which models a society of mixed motive individuals that are subject to reputation, network and power dynamics. In this work, we take a step towards evaluating the Junior High Game's ability to simulate societies with government institutions through evolutionary simulation. We evaluate the results through the simulated society's total welfare, equality, and group dynamics.

Degree

College and Department

Physical and Mathematical Sciences; Computer Science

Rights

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