Modeling emergence of norms in multi-agent systems by applying tipping points ideas

Abstract: Norms are known to be a major factor determining humans behavior. It's also shown that norms can be quite effective tool for building agent-based societies. Various normative architectures have been proposed for designing normative multi-agent systems (NorMAS). Due to human nature of the concept norms, many of these architectures are built based on theories in social sciences. Tipping point theory, as is briefly discussed in this paper, seems to have a great potential to be used for designing normative architectures. This theory deals with the factors that affect social epidemics that arise in human societies. In this paper, we try to apply the main concepts of this theory to agent-based normative architectures. We show several ways to implement these concepts, and study their effects in an agent-based normative scenario.