Agent-based models are more likely to generate accurate outputs if they incorporate valid representations of human agents than if they don't. The present article outlines three research methodologies commonly used for explicating the cognitive processes and motivational orientations of human...

Programming languages for social simulations are rapidly proliferating. The result is a Tower of Babel effect: Many of us find it increasingly effortful to learn and to teach more programming languages and increasingly difficult to sustain an audience beyond the programming dialect of our...

Two Monte Carlo simulations were developed to investigate the social consequences of balancing sentiment relations among triads of members of a larger group, when balancing one triad can imbalance others. Using assumptions of Balance Theory (Heider, 1958), random starting combinations of liking,...

An investigation into the conditions conducive to the emergence of heterogeneity amoung agents is presented. This is done by using a model of creative artificial agents to investigate some of the possibilities. The simulation is based on Brian Arthurs `El Farol Bar model but extended so that the...

We present a computational simulation which captures aspects of negotiation as the interaction of agents searching for an agreement over their own mental model. Specifically this simulation relates the beliefs of each agent about the action of cause and effect to the resulting negotiation...

[No abstract for this editorial]

In recent years there has been an explosion of published literature utilising Multi-Agent-Based Simulation (MABS) to study social, biological and artificial systems. This kind of work is evidenced within JASSS but is increasingly becoming part of mainstream practice across many disciplines....

A published simulation model (Riolo et al. 2001) was replicated in two independent implementations so that the results as well as the conceptual design align. This double replication allowed the original to be analysed and critiqued with confidence. In this case, the replication revealed some...

Wider issues of the validation of computational models - ascertaining that they are sound and consistent relative to some logical formalism and/or substantive theory - have not been a subject of the management science literature. In this paper, we demonstrate that computational models can be...

It is argued that complexity has only a limited use as a paradigm against reductionist approaches and that it has a much richer potential as a comparable property. What can complexity be usefully said to be a property of is discussed. It is argued that it is unlikely to have any useful value as...