Sociology Mind
2012. Vol.2, No.3, 302-305
Published Online July 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/sm) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/sm.2012.23040
Copyright © 2012 SciRes.
302
Multi-Agent Based Social Integrity Simulation and
Its Evolution
Yu Wang, Wangjing Zhu, Hua Gen, Haiyang Wang
Information and Engineering College, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
Email: zhuwang1987jing@yahoo.com.cn
Received March 4th, 2012; revised April 5th, 2012; accepted May 12th, 2012
The Computer simulation has played an important in complex science. As the research on Multi-Agent
becomes popular, method of modeling and simulation based on Multi-Agent has been applied on the field
of social science, forming a new inter-discipline called Agent Based Social Simulation. According to this
methodology, a social integrity simulation model of mixed strategy game is introduced, which is aimed to
interpret the problem of lacking social integrity. And through analysis of the model, a new approach is
provided to study the social integrity problem.
Keywords: Agent; Game; Computer Simulation; Social Integrity
Introduction
Credit system is a necessary prerequisite for the formation of
human society, the cornerstone for social development and
harmonious society. The construction of social credit system is
a long and difficult project that requires a joint effort of the
government, financial institutions, enterprises, individuals and
the whole society. When building a harmonious society, the
importance of social integrity becomes increasingly prominent,
but the phenomenon of lack of integrity is prevalent: telling lies,
making fake diplomas and fake invoices, tax evasion, unreal
advertising, sale of counterfeits, contract fraud, unfair competi-
tion, it would inevitably lead to a serious consequences. There-
fore, taking the integrity or dishonesty as a research topic has a
strong theoretical and practical significance.
In the study of social integrity, many domestic scholars have
done some research with modern economic theories, including
the asymmetric information theory, game theory and transac-
tion cost theory and etc.
Wei Zhong (2009) analyzed the integrity problem between
individuals, company and government by using symmetric and
asymmetric evolutionary game theory under limited rationality;
Lin Hongxi (2010) established a social integrity model accord-
ing to the evolutionary game, concluding that the root cause of
the lack of social integrity is that the possible loss of cheaters is
relative small to his earnings. Wang Zheng (2006) used re-
peated games theory to explain how to establish a integrity
society; Wang Meiqin’s research (2010) tried to speed up the
construction of social credit system from three aspects, personal
archive management, archival information development and
utilization, legal construction of personal archive; Liu Zengzhi
(2010) proposed to establish the institutional basis, the cultural
construction of social integrity.
The above researches made a policy support against social
integrity through analysis of phenomenon, but their common
drawback is that they mostly based on theoretical analysis of
qualitative, and are not from a quantitative point of view to give
some explanation, can not reflect the a process of integrity for-
mation. In some articles that using the Game Theory to analyze
social integrity, the pure strategies models are used, which
cannot represent the true nature of human being when people
make a choice. We point out that people based on certain prob-
ability to make a choice, which called a mixed strategy. Then,
on the basis of the previous research, we proposed a hybrid
strategy simulation model of social integrity, in the hope of
studying social integrity from a quantitative point.
Multi-Agent Model and Artificial Society
Traditional social science concerns cooperation, coordination,
organizational behavior, social dynamics, the evolution of cus-
toms and morals and other social phenomena. How to study the
complexity of social phenomena better has been the focus of
domestic and foreign scholars. Traditional methods, such as
mathematics and statistics, establish models from macro-level
abstraction. These models contain a lot of high-level assump-
tions, must be limited to near-stringent restrictions, and often
repeated. In the late 1990s, as complex adaptive systems (CAS)
theory develops, Agent-based computer simulation methods
have been widely applied to the simulation of sociology, whose
feature is that it starts to analyze the problem from the perspec-
tive of individual rather than the whole.
Axelrod was one of the first men using Agent-Based Simula-
tion of sociological. In 1984, he held a special “prisoner’s di-
lemma” game computer programming competition. The 1990s,
Builder and Bankes consciously brought up the concept “Arti-
ficial Societies” for the first time at their report to Rand com-
pany: “Artificial Societies: A Concept for Basic Research on
Societal Impact of Information Technology”.
“Artificial society” is a new method to study social science.
It is a complex Multi-Agent Model, in which Agents on behalf
of individuals or social groups and can be created through com-
puter programming, and then let them follow a certain simple
Agent rule to interaction. Finally, we find out the laws by ob-
serving the emergence of Agent’s mutual interact, and use these
laws to explain and understand the reality of human society in
the macro-phenomenon.
The main difference between Multi-Agent Models created by