Symposium Issue on Social Simulation

Abstract

>> Social simulation is the study of social phenomena by means of computer models where the microlevel behavior, interaction, and the social environment are explicitly modeled with a view to understanding their macro outcomes. Although relevant progress in social simulation has been made toward understanding important complex social puzzles, including urban segregation patterns, social norms, opinion dynamics, and market behavior (e.g., Edmonds & Ruth, 2013), this field has developed more on the transdisciplinary edges, rather than within the mainstream of the social sciences. This has the result that it has higher recognition in disciplines such as computer sciences, behavioral sciences, physics, and ecology than in the social sciences, with which it shares its subject matter. This pattern of impact was confirmed by a recent analysis of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship social simulation journal, where Squazzoni and Casnici (2013) found that social simulation articles cited a lot of the social science literature but were themselves cited more outside social sciences. They argued that social simulation is a cross-disciplinary field that is doing more to disseminate social science concepts and topics into distant fields than it has been effective at changing social sciences from the within (see also Meyer, Lorscheid, & Troitzsch, 2009; Meyer, Zaggl, & Carley, 2011). While we do not underestimate the importance of cross-disciplinary domains and crossfertilization between disciplines, with this special issue we aim to strengthen links between social simulation and the wider social sciences by showing how this approach can help explain relevant social science puzzles. Thus, we have included a representative variety of studies, from quantitative to more qualitative oriented analyses, so as to give a comprehensive overview of the potentials of this technique. In this way, we hope to show how social simulation can help fill a gap between quality and quantity, logic reasoning and measurement, which is one of the main problems in the social science (e.g., Squazzoni, 2012). The issue starts with an overview on social simulation provided by Flaminio Squazzoni, Wander Jager, and Bruce Edmonds. where important challenges of this approach for the development of social sciences are discussed. A particular focus is on the role of behavioral heterogeneity and the interplay of social behavior and structure, which are typically out of the scope of more established social science approaches, such as quantitative sociology and economics.