0937
February 09, 2009
Project Name
PsychSim
Project Description
Agent-based modeling of human social behavior is an increasingly important research area as both a basic research tool for computational social science as well as a tool to create realistic environments for computer-based games used in education and entertainment. PsychSim is an implemented multiagent-based simulation tool for modeling interactions and influence among groups or individuals. Each agent has its own model of the world, including beliefs about its environment and models of other agents. In addition to agents beliefs about others, a theory of mind, PsychSim also provides them with a psychologically motivated mechanism for updating their beliefs in response to actions and messages of other agents. PsychSim has been used in a variety of serious video games and as an analysis tool for real-world social phenomena.
Job Description
The intern will work with the PsychSim team to model a social scenario using the PsychSim tool and evaluate the model. This will include computationally modeling a historical event in PsychSim, validate the model against the history of the event, explore perturbations of the model (alternative histories) and characterize emergent phenomena.
Specific Skills:
• Solid background in psychological, sociological and/or economic theories of human behavior
• Software programming skills, especially in Python, would be helpful
• Experience in computational modeling of social theories and dynamic system analysis would be plus