Bruce Edmonds
Biographic Data
| ID | 4178654 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bruce Edmonds |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bruce |
| FAMILY NAME | Edmonds |
| SIGNATURE | EDMONDS B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Manchester Metropolitan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3903-2507 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 60 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
From cognitive coherence to political polarization: A data‐driven agent‐based model of belief change
Political polarization represents a rising issue in many countries, making it more and more important to understand its relation to cognitive‐motivational and social influence mechanisms. Yet, the link between micro‐level mechanisms and macro‐level phenomena remains unclear. We investigated the consequences of individuals striving for cognitive coherence in their belief systems on political polarization in society in an agent‐based model. In this…
Does Non-violent Repression Have Stronger Dampening Effects than State Violence? Insight from an Emotion-Based Model of Non-violent Dissent
The effects of repression on dissent are debated widely. We contribute to the debate by developing an agent-based model grounded in ethnographic interviews with dissidents. Building on new psychology research, the model integrates emotions as a dynamic context of dissent. The model moreover differentiates between four repression types: violence, street blockages, curfews and Facebook cuts. The simulations identify short-term dampening effects of …
The practice and rhetoric of prediction – the case in agent-based modelling
This paper looks at the tension between the desire to claim predictive ability for Agent-Based Models (ABMs) and its extreme difficulty for social and ecological systems, suggesting that this is the main cause for the continuance of a rhetoric of prediction that is at odds with what is achievable. Following others, it recommends that it is better to avoid giving the impression of predictive ability until this has been iteratively and independentl…
An introduction to the themed section on ‘ Using agent-based simulation for integrating qualitative and quantitative evidence ’
KEYWORDS: Agent-based modellingdata integrationevidence integrationinterdisciplinaritysocial simulation
Philosophy after Darwin: Classic and Contemporary Readings
The ODD Protocol for Describing Agent-Based and Other Simulation Models: A Second Update to Improve Clarity, Replication, and Structural Realism
by Volker Grimm, Steven F. Railsback, Christian E. Vincenot, Uta Berger, Cara Gallagher, Donald L. DeAngelis, Bruce Edmonds, Jiaqi Ge, Jarl Giske, Jürgen Groeneveld, Alice S.A. Johnston, Alexander Milles, Jacob Nabe-Nielsen, J. Gareth Polhill, Viktoriia Radchuk, Marie-Sophie Rohwäder, Richard A. Stillman, Jan C. Thiele and Daniel Ayllón
Computational Models That Matter During a Global Pandemic Outbreak: A Call to Action
The COVID-pandemic is causing a dramatic loss of lives worldwide, challenging the sustainability of our health care systems, threatening economic meltdown, and putting pressure on the mental health of individuals (due to social distancing and lock-down measures). The pandemic is also posing severe challenges to the scientific community, with scholars under pressure to respond to policymakers' demands for advice despite the absence of adequate, tr…
Co-developing beliefs and social influence networks—towards understanding socio-cognitive processes like Brexit
A model of mutual influence is presented where the structure of individual’s beliefs and the social structure both matter. The model thus combines processes of belief change base on Thagard’s (Behav Brain Sci 12:435–467, 1989) theory of mental coherence with plausible processes of social network change. This combination of cognitive and social processes has outcomes that are qualitatively different from either only cognitive or only social proces…
Different Modelling Purposes
How one builds, checks, validates and interprets a model depends on its 'purpose'. This is true even if the same model code is used for di erent purposes. This means that a model built for one purpose but then used for another needs to be re-justified for the new purpose and this will probably mean it also has to be rechecked, re-validated and maybe even re-built in a di erent way. Here we review some of the di erent purposes for a simulation mod…
Simulation Models of Ethnocentrism and Diversity: An Introduction to the Special Issue
The theme and key ideas behind the special issue are discussed, in particular the terms: “ethnocentrism” and “diversity.” It picks out three very influential simulation models in this area, pointing out that these are at the abstract end of the simulation spectrum, thus not strongly related to any data and overinterpreted by many subsequent readers. It also briefly discusses four themes that emerged in an associated workshop. Finally, the four pa…
Intragenerational Cultural Evolution and Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism denotes a positive orientation toward those sharing the same ethnicity and a negative one toward others. Previous models demonstrated how ethnocentrism might evolve intergenerationally (vertically) when ethnicity and behavior are inherited. We model short-term intragenerational (horizontal) cultural adaptation where agents have a fixed ethnicity but have the ability to form and join fluid cultural groups and to change how they defin…
Cascade or echo chamber? A complex agent-based simulation of voter turnout
Using an agent-based simulation of electoral participation, this paper examines the second order or cascade effects of an exogenous increase in turnout. Unlike most previous applications of agent-based modelling in political science, we adopt a descriptively complex rather than a simple model of behaviour. Experimenting with different levels of mobilisation allows estimation of the extent to which mobilisation spreads beyond the primary mobilisat…
Using Qualitative Evidence to Inform the Specification of Agent-Based Models
This is an introduction to the special section of JASSS on the above topic. It argues for the importance of qualitative evidence in social science, and particularly in the specification of agent-based models. It ends by suggesting some criteria for judging methods for using qualitative evidence for this purpose
A Context- and Scope-Sensitive Analysis of Narrative Data to Aid the Specification of Agent Behaviour
A structure for analysing narrative data is suggested, one that distinguishes three parts in sequence: context (a heuristic to identify what knowledge is relevant given a kind of situation), scope (what is possible within that situation) and narrative elements (the detailed conditional and sequential structure of actions and events given the context and scope). This structure is first motivated and then illustrated with some simple examples taken…
Visionary Women Writers of Chicago's Black Arts Movement. Carmen L. Phelps
Journal Article Visionary Women Writers of Chicago’s Black Arts Movement. Carmen L. Phelps. Get access Visionary Women Writers of Chicago’s Black Arts Movement. Carmen L. Phelps . Jackson : University Press of Mississippi , 2013 . 188 pages. $55.00 cloth. Brittney Edmonds Brittney Edmonds Princeton University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 40, Issue 1, Spring 2015, Pages 218–220, https://doi…
The Complexity of Social Norms
Complexity of Social Norms
The Conundrum of Social Norms
Simulating Social Complexity: A Handbook
Social systems are among the most complex known. This poses particular problems for those who wish to understand them. The complexity often makes analytic approaches infeasible and natural language approaches inadequate for relating intricate cause and effect. However, individual- and agent-based computational approaches hold out the possibility of new and deeper understanding of such systems. Simulating Social Complexity examines all aspects of …
Measuring Simulation-Observation Fit: An Introduction to Ordinal Pattern Analysis
Most traditional strategies of assessing the fit between a simulation's set of predictions (outputs) and a set of relevant observations rely either on visual inspection or squared distances among averages. Here we introduce an alternative goodness-of-fit strategy, Ordinal Pattern Analysis (OPA) that will (we argue) be more appropriate for judging the goodness-of-fit of simulations in many situations. OPA is based on matches and mismatches among t…
Symposium Issue on Social Simulation: An Introduction
>> 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 &…
Socially Intelligent Agents: Creating Relationships With Computers And Robots
Socially situated planning provides one mechanism for improving the social awareness ofagents. Obviously this work isin the preliminary stages and many of the limitation and the relationship to other work could not be addressed in such a short chapter. The chief limitation, of course, is the strong commitment to de?ning social reasoning solely atthe meta-level, which restricts the subtlety of social behavior. Nonetheless, our experience in some r…
Social Simulation in the Social Sciences: A Brief Overview
This article provides an overview of the social simulation approach to the study of social phenomena. We focus especially on the relevance of heterogeneity of social behavior and dynamics and the complex interplay of agent behavior and social structure. The article identifies the peculiarities and the explanatory achievements of this approach and then discusses its prospects and challenges. Special attention is given to (i) how micro-level behavi…
Simulating the Social Processes of Science
Science is the result of a substantially social process. That is, science relies on many inter-personal processes, including: selection and communication of research findings, discussion of method, checking and judgement of others' research, development of norms of scientific behaviour, organisation of the application of specialist skills/tools, and the organisation of each field (e.g. allocation of funding). An isolated individual, however cleve…
A Brief Survey of Some Relevant Philosophy of Science
This briefly reviews some philosophy of science that might be relevant to simulating the social processes of science. It also includes a couple of examples from the sociology of science because these are inextricable from the philosophy
Socially Intelligent Agents: Creating Relationships With Computers And Robots
Socially situated planning provides one mechanism for improving the social awareness ofagents. Obviously this work isin the preliminary stages and many of the limitation and the relationship to other work could not be addressed in such a short chapter. The chief limitation, of course, is the strong commitment to de?ning social reasoning solely atthe meta-level, which restricts the subtlety of social behavior. Nonetheless, our experience in some r…
Social Simulation in the Social Sciences: A Brief Overview
This article provides an overview of the social simulation approach to the study of social phenomena. We focus especially on the relevance of heterogeneity of social behavior and dynamics and the complex interplay of agent behavior and social structure. The article identifies the peculiarities and the explanatory achievements of this approach and then discusses its prospects and challenges. Special attention is given to (i) how micro-level behavi…
Sociology and Simulation: Statistical and Qualitative Cross-Validation
Agent‐based simulation modeling enables the construction of formal models that simultaneously can be microvalidated against accounts of individual behavior and macrovalidated against aggregate data that show the characteristics of many socially derived time series. These characteristics (leptokurtosis and clustered volatility) have two important consequences: first, they also appear in suitably structured agent‐based models where, like real socia…
Cascade or echo chamber? A complex agent-based simulation of voter turnout
Using an agent-based simulation of electoral participation, this paper examines the second order or cascade effects of an exogenous increase in turnout. Unlike most previous applications of agent-based modelling in political science, we adopt a descriptively complex rather than a simple model of behaviour. Experimenting with different levels of mobilisation allows estimation of the extent to which mobilisation spreads beyond the primary mobilisat…
Intragenerational Cultural Evolution and Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism denotes a positive orientation toward those sharing the same ethnicity and a negative one toward others. Previous models demonstrated how ethnocentrism might evolve intergenerationally (vertically) when ethnicity and behavior are inherited. We model short-term intragenerational (horizontal) cultural adaptation where agents have a fixed ethnicity but have the ability to form and join fluid cultural groups and to change how they defin…
Social Simulation: Technologies, Advances and New Discoveries
The simulation of social behavior in a variety of domains is an increasingly important technological tool. A reference survey of social simulation work, Social Simulation: Technologies, Advances and New Discoveries comprehensively collects the most exciting developments in the field. Drawing research contributions from a vibrant community of experts on social simulation, this Premier Reference Source provides a set of unique and innovative approa…
Computational Simulation as Theoretical Experiment
Agent-based simulation can help establish the possibility and characteristics of emergent processes. However the simulation is meaningless without an accompanying interpretation. We argue that the original context needs to be carried with the simulation so as to limit excess generalization from such models. The simulation becomes a theoretical experiment which mediates between observations of the phenomena and natural language descriptions. Repli…
Socially Intelligent Agents: Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots
Developing Agents Who Can Realte to Us: Putting Agents in Our Loop via Situated Self-Creation
Computational Simulation as Theoretical Experiment
Agent-based simulation can help establish the possibility and characteristics of emergent processes. However the simulation is meaningless without an accompanying interpretation. We argue that the original context needs to be carried with the simulation so as to limit excess generalization from such models. The simulation becomes a theoretical experiment which mediates between observations of the phenomena and natural language descriptions. Repli…
Sociology and Simulation: Statistical and Qualitative Cross-Validation
Agent‐based simulation modeling enables the construction of formal models that simultaneously can be microvalidated against accounts of individual behavior and macrovalidated against aggregate data that show the characteristics of many socially derived time series. These characteristics (leptokurtosis and clustered volatility) have two important consequences: first, they also appear in suitably structured agent‐based models where, like real socia…
Worldviews, Science and US
Social Simulation: Technologies, Advances and New Discoveries
The simulation of social behavior in a variety of domains is an increasingly important technological tool. A reference survey of social simulation work, Social Simulation: Technologies, Advances and New Discoveries comprehensively collects the most exciting developments in the field. Drawing research contributions from a vibrant community of experts on social simulation, this Premier Reference Source provides a set of unique and innovative approa…
Bootstrapping Knowledge About Social Phenomena Using Simulation Models
There are considerable difficulties in the way of the development of useful and reliable simulation models of social phenomena, including that any simulation necessarily includes many assumptions that are not directly supported by evidence. Despite these difficulties, many still hope to develop quite general models of social phenomena. This paper argues that such hopes are ill-founded, in other words that there will be no short-cut to useful and …
Simulating the Social Processes of Science
Science is the result of a substantially social process. That is, science relies on many inter-personal processes, including: selection and communication of research findings, discussion of method, checking and judgement of others' research, development of norms of scientific behaviour, organisation of the application of specialist skills/tools, and the organisation of each field (e.g. allocation of funding). An isolated individual, however cleve…
A Brief Survey of Some Relevant Philosophy of Science
This briefly reviews some philosophy of science that might be relevant to simulating the social processes of science. It also includes a couple of examples from the sociology of science because these are inextricable from the philosophy
Disaggregating quality judgements
Simulating Social Complexity: A Handbook
Social systems are among the most complex known. This poses particular problems for those who wish to understand them. The complexity often makes analytic approaches infeasible and natural language approaches inadequate for relating intricate cause and effect. However, individual- and agent-based computational approaches hold out the possibility of new and deeper understanding of such systems. Simulating Social Complexity examines all aspects of …
Measuring Simulation-Observation Fit: An Introduction to Ordinal Pattern Analysis
Most traditional strategies of assessing the fit between a simulation's set of predictions (outputs) and a set of relevant observations rely either on visual inspection or squared distances among averages. Here we introduce an alternative goodness-of-fit strategy, Ordinal Pattern Analysis (OPA) that will (we argue) be more appropriate for judging the goodness-of-fit of simulations in many situations. OPA is based on matches and mismatches among t…
Symposium Issue on Social Simulation: An Introduction
>> 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 &…
Socially Intelligent Agents: Creating Relationships With Computers And Robots
Socially situated planning provides one mechanism for improving the social awareness ofagents. Obviously this work isin the preliminary stages and many of the limitation and the relationship to other work could not be addressed in such a short chapter. The chief limitation, of course, is the strong commitment to de?ning social reasoning solely atthe meta-level, which restricts the subtlety of social behavior. Nonetheless, our experience in some r…
Social Simulation in the Social Sciences: A Brief Overview
This article provides an overview of the social simulation approach to the study of social phenomena. We focus especially on the relevance of heterogeneity of social behavior and dynamics and the complex interplay of agent behavior and social structure. The article identifies the peculiarities and the explanatory achievements of this approach and then discusses its prospects and challenges. Special attention is given to (i) how micro-level behavi…
The Complexity of Social Norms
Complexity of Social Norms
The Conundrum of Social Norms
Using Qualitative Evidence to Inform the Specification of Agent-Based Models
This is an introduction to the special section of JASSS on the above topic. It argues for the importance of qualitative evidence in social science, and particularly in the specification of agent-based models. It ends by suggesting some criteria for judging methods for using qualitative evidence for this purpose
A Context- and Scope-Sensitive Analysis of Narrative Data to Aid the Specification of Agent Behaviour
A structure for analysing narrative data is suggested, one that distinguishes three parts in sequence: context (a heuristic to identify what knowledge is relevant given a kind of situation), scope (what is possible within that situation) and narrative elements (the detailed conditional and sequential structure of actions and events given the context and scope). This structure is first motivated and then illustrated with some simple examples taken…
Visionary Women Writers of Chicago's Black Arts Movement. Carmen L. Phelps
Journal Article Visionary Women Writers of Chicago’s Black Arts Movement. Carmen L. Phelps. Get access Visionary Women Writers of Chicago’s Black Arts Movement. Carmen L. Phelps . Jackson : University Press of Mississippi , 2013 . 188 pages. $55.00 cloth. Brittney Edmonds Brittney Edmonds Princeton University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 40, Issue 1, Spring 2015, Pages 218–220, https://doi…
Cascade or echo chamber? A complex agent-based simulation of voter turnout
Using an agent-based simulation of electoral participation, this paper examines the second order or cascade effects of an exogenous increase in turnout. Unlike most previous applications of agent-based modelling in political science, we adopt a descriptively complex rather than a simple model of behaviour. Experimenting with different levels of mobilisation allows estimation of the extent to which mobilisation spreads beyond the primary mobilisat…
Co-developing beliefs and social influence networks—towards understanding socio-cognitive processes like Brexit
A model of mutual influence is presented where the structure of individual’s beliefs and the social structure both matter. The model thus combines processes of belief change base on Thagard’s (Behav Brain Sci 12:435–467, 1989) theory of mental coherence with plausible processes of social network change. This combination of cognitive and social processes has outcomes that are qualitatively different from either only cognitive or only social proces…
Different Modelling Purposes
How one builds, checks, validates and interprets a model depends on its 'purpose'. This is true even if the same model code is used for di erent purposes. This means that a model built for one purpose but then used for another needs to be re-justified for the new purpose and this will probably mean it also has to be rechecked, re-validated and maybe even re-built in a di erent way. Here we review some of the di erent purposes for a simulation mod…
Simulation Models of Ethnocentrism and Diversity: An Introduction to the Special Issue
The theme and key ideas behind the special issue are discussed, in particular the terms: “ethnocentrism” and “diversity.” It picks out three very influential simulation models in this area, pointing out that these are at the abstract end of the simulation spectrum, thus not strongly related to any data and overinterpreted by many subsequent readers. It also briefly discusses four themes that emerged in an associated workshop. Finally, the four pa…
Computer Science (25 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Data science (11 works) · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence (11 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Engineering (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works)