Introducing Emotions in the Computational Study of Norms
CPM Report No.: 00-69
By: Alexander Staller and Paolo Petta
Date: 2nd May 2000
A Paper at: The "Starting from
Society" symposium at ASIB'2000
convention, Birmingham University, 16th-19th April 2000.
Also published as: Alexander Staller and Paolo Petta (2000),
"Introducing Emotions in the Computational Study of Norms", in the Proceedings
of the AISB'00 Symposium on Starting from Society - the Application of Social
Analogies to Computational Systems, Birmingham, UK: AISB, 101-112. (ISBN 1
902956 13 8)
Abstract
We argue that modelling emotions among agents in artificial societies will further the
computational study of social norms. The appraisal theory of emotions is presented as
theoretical underpinning of Jon Elster's view that social norms are sustained not only by
material sanctions but also by emotions such as shame and contempt. Appraisal theory
suggests the following twofold relationship between social norms and emotions: First, social
norms play an important role in the generation of emotions; second, emotion regulation depends
heavily on the influence of social norms. Based on these insights, we present an emotion-based
view on the influential study by Conte and Castelfranchi (1995); without mentioning emotions,
they argue that a function of social norms is aggression control. Appraisal theory offers a
principled framework for the development of TABASCO, a three-layer agent architecture
incorporating social norms. At the macro level, the computational study of social norms can
profit by economic and sociobiological theories, which suggest that emotions play an important
role in sustaining norms of cooperation and reciprocity. We show how appraisal theory can
serve as a link between the macro and micro levels, and summarize the potential benefits from
the development of TABASCO.
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