Modeling and managing collective cognitive convergence

When the same set of people interact frequently with one another, they grow to think more and more along the same lines, a phenomenon we call "collective cognitive convergence" (C3 ). In this paper, we discuss instances of this phenomenon and why it is advantageous or disadvantageous; review previous work in sociology, computational social science, and evolutionary biology that sheds light on C3 ; define a computational model for the convergence process and quantitative metrics that can be used to study it; report on experiments with this model and metric; and suggest how the insights from this model can inspire techniques for managing C3 . Categories and Subject Descriptors J.4 [Computer Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: H. Van Dyke Parunak, Theodore C. Belding, Rainer Hilscher, Sven Brueckner
• Keywords: ATAL 2008, Cognitive Convergence, Collective Cognitive Convergence, Computational Social Science, Intelligent Agents