---
title: "Social simulation"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_simulation"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:58:43.417449+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Simulations, being man-made from mathematical interfaces, predict human behavior in a far too simple manner in regard to the complexities of humanity and our actions.
Simulations cannot enlighten researchers as to how people interact or behave in ways not programmed into their models. For this reason, the scope of simulations are limited in that the researchers must already know what they are going to find (to a degree, for they cannot find anything they themselves did not place in the model) at least vaguely, possibly skewing the results.
Due to the complexities of what is being measured, simulations must be analyzed in unbiased ways; however, with the model running on a pre-made set of instructions coded into it by a modeler, biases exist almost universally.
It is highly difficult and often impractical to attempt to link the findings from the abstract world the simulation creates and our complex society and all of its variation.
Researchers working in social simulation might respond that the competing theories from the social sciences are far simpler than those achieved through simulation and therefore suffer the aforementioned drawbacks much more strongly.  Theories in some social science tend to be linear models that are not dynamic, and are generally inferred from small laboratory experiments (laboratory tests are most common in psychology but rare in sociology, political science, economics and geography). The behavior of populations of agents under these models is rarely tested or verified against empirical observation.

== See also ==
Agent-based computational economics
Agent-based social simulation
Artificial consciousness
Artificial reality
Artificial society
Computational sociology
Cliodynamics
Interactive online characters
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
Simulated reality
Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations
System dynamics
Virtual reality

== References ==
Carley, Kathleen M. (2002), "Computational organizational science and organizational engineering", Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, 10 (5–7): 253–269, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.299.9346, doi:10.1016/S1569-190X(02)00119-3
Davidsson, Paul (2000), "Multi Agent Based Simulation: Beyond Social Simulation" (PDF), Multi-Agent-Based Simulation, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1979: 97–107, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.15.1056, doi:10.1007/3-540-44561-7_7, ISBN 978-3-540-41522-0{{citation}}:  CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
Hadzibeganovic, Tarik; Stauffer, Dietrich; Schulze, Christian (2008), "Boundary effects in a three-state modified voter model for languages", Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications, 387 (13): 3242–3252, arXiv:0711.2757, Bibcode:2008PhyA..387.3242H, doi:10.1016/j.physa.2008.02.003, S2CID 14334804
Polhill, G. J.; Edmonds, B. (2007), "Open Access for Social Simulation" (PDF), Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 10 (3)
Takahashi, Shingo; Sallach, David; Rouchier, Juliette (2007), Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress, Springer, p. 354, ISBN 978-4-431-73150-4
Macy, M. W.; Willer, R. (2002), "From Factors to Actors", Annual Review of Sociology, 28: 143–166, doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.141117, S2CID 1368768
Margitay-Becht, Andras (2005), "Agent Based Modelling of AID" (PDF), Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems: 84–93, archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-06-30, retrieved 2007-09-25
National Research, C. (2006), Defense Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis: Meeting the Challenge, 500 Fifth Street, N.W. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, ISBN 978-0-309-10303-9
Sylvan, Donald A. (1998), "Modeling the rise and fall of states", Mershon International Studies Review, 42 (Supplement_2): 377–379, doi:10.2307/254437, JSTOR 254437
Silverman, Eric; Bryden, John (2007), "From Artificial Societies to New Social Science Theory", Advances in Artificial Life (PDF), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4648, pp. 565–574, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-74913-4_57, ISBN 978-3-540-74912-7
Stauffer, Dietrich (2003), "Sociophysics simulations", Computing in Science and Engineering, 5 (3): 71–75, arXiv:cond-mat/0210213, Bibcode:2003CSE.....5c..71S, doi:10.1109/MCISE.2003.1196310, S2CID 15746458
Sun, Ron (2006), Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction: From Cognitive Modeling to Social Simulation, Cambridge University Press, New York

== External links ==
JASSS - The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
ESSA - The European Social Simulation Association
CSSSA - The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas
ASSA - The Asian Social Simulation Association
JoSC - The Journal of Social Complexity
Entry on Social Simulation in the NCeSS Wiki
Centre for Research in Social Simulation, University of Surrey
Laboratory for Agent Based Social Simulation, National Research Council (CNR), Italy
Dynamics Lab University College Dublin Ireland
CASOS - Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems