Mechanisms for Social Norms Support in Virtual Societies

Abstract. Social Norms proliferate in societies as a mechanism for self- organi-zation. This kind of norms are not enforced by a central authority and the indi-viduals of the society are those responsible for their generation and maintenance. The maintenance process is what is known as norm support and is supported by several mechanisms like for example laws, social proof, dominance, etc. We believe that agent based simulation is a suitable technique for investigating this topic. In this paper we present a simulated society of virtual agents which helps us studying the effects of a social evaluation like the Image as a mechanism to ensure the norm support process in a society with liars. Intimately related, we also introduce the concept of Visionary agent (individual that can evaluate norms before trying them in the real society) and study its effect on simulations. 1 Introduction and Related Work Social norms are part of our everyday life. They help people self-organizing in many situations where having an authority representative is not feasible. On the contrary to institutional rules, the responsibility to enforce social norms is not the task of a centra