The effect of directionality on the information propagation in a contagion model with complex propagation, i.e., that takes into account the need for simultaneous exposure to multiple activation sources, is studied. While it is known that complex propagation is blocked with increasing network...

Cross-impact analysis is the name for a familiar method for multidisciplinary systems analysis in social sciences and management sciences, especially in technology foresight, technology assessment and scenario planning. A recently proposed form of cross-impact analysis, CIB, may be of interest...

The use of physical formalism and methods as a tool for the analysis of sociological problems became popular since the papers of Galam or Stauffer, followed by the authors of some interesting models, based often on the study of cellular automata evolution. In this paper we are going to deduce...

Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have been very popular in the past few years. The profit of an MMORPG company is proportional to how many users registered, and the instant number of online avatars is a key factor to assess how popular an MMORPG is. We use the...

We propose a thermodynamic version of the Axelrod model of social influence. In one-dimensional (1D) lattices, the thermodynamic model becomes a coupled Potts model with a bonding interaction that increases with the site matching traits. We analytically calculate thermodynamic and critical...

We propose a thermodynamic multi-state spin model in order to describe equilibrial behavior of a society. Our model is inspired by the Axelrod model used in social network studies. In the framework of the statistical mechanics language, we analyze phase transitions of our model, in which the...

We consider the majority-vote dynamics where the noise parameter, associated with each spin on a two-dimensional square lattice, is a bimodally distributed random variable defined as q with probability (1−f) or zero with probability f, where 0≤f≤1 is the proportion of noiseless sites. We...

Crime is the result of a rational distinctive balance between the benefits and costs of an illegal act. This idea was proposed by Becker more than forty years ago (Becker (1968) [1]). In this paper, we simulate a simple artificial society, in which agents earn fixed wages and can augment (or...

We here present a fixed agents version of an original model of the emergence of hierarchies among social agents first introduced by Bonabeau et al. Having interactions occurring on a social network rather than among “walkers” does not drastically alter the dynamics. But it makes social...

We study a prototypical model of a Parliament with two Parties or two Political Coalitions and we show how the introduction of a variable percentage of randomly selected independent legislators can increase the global efficiency of a Legislature, in terms of both the number of laws passed and...