Social Impact and Optimization

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper proposes some ideas and suggestions describing application of dynamic theory of socialimpact (SI) simulations for optimization. This connection could lead to development of a novel psychologically inspiredoptimization scheme. The main aim is to use some macro level phenomena emerged from micro level SI theory inoptimization. This aim is reached by introduction of fitness evaluation to SI simulation framework. For demonstrationof optimization abilities of SI simulation, some preliminary experiments are presented.KEYWORDS: Social psychology, optimization, social impact theory, nature-inspired, population based. INTRODUCTION For a long time, there has been a gap between natural sciences and humanities. One of many issues is the differencebetween technical and social science. Naturally, it could seem quite difficult to imagine some common elements sharedby these two different areas. However, recently, the cross influences and inspirations are turning to be much morefrequent day by day. One of the relatively wide area of these connections is the use of artificial intelligence methods insocial science. An example is the building of mathematical models of cognitive processes, where computer simulationsand cognitive sciences are encountering ([1], [2]). Some of these sociological simulations were based on models ofindividual actors realized simply by cellular automata. For instance, Thomas Schelling [3] was awarded with the NobelPrize “for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.” Hischeckerboard model is very similar to cellular automata models. Among others, it is regarded to be one of examples ofgood explanation in social sciences [4] or one of the predecessors of agent based computer models [5].The examples mentioned above originate from sociology. However, this paper will be much more related tosocial psychology issue and its psychological point of view. It describes the modification of computer simulation,modelling the processes investigated by social psychology. The original simulation was described in [6] and was basedon Latanes’ dynamic theory of social impact [7]. We have modified some parts of the simulation to investigate theability of society to optimize.