Mechanics and dynamics of social construction: Modeling the emergence of culture from individual mental representation

Authored by Lynette Shaw

Date Published: 2015

DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2015.07.003

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: NetLogo

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

This paper presents a parsimonious model of social construction that can be extended and applied by researchers interested in unpacking how culture emerges from individual meaning-making. Using a review of contemporary cognition research, it first hones in on the mental representation processes which drive individual sense-making in social situations. It then uses agent-based modeling (ABM), a modern simulation tool used to theorize how emergent phenomena arise from individual behaviors, to systematically demonstrate how this cognitive mechanism generates macro-level dynamics. Specifically, it shows how mental representation processes can account for cultural emergence and subgrouping, cultural path dependency and lock-in, endogenous cultural change, and the manifestation of these collective dynamics as variations in individuals' experiences of culture. The final part of the paper discusses a few initial implications of this work including the expanded use of ABM in cultural theory, testing and verification of this theoretical work using Implicit Association Testing (IAT) and large-scale quantitative analyses, and this model's significance for existing qualitative approaches to the study of culture. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Tags

cognition Path dependence Strategies Mirror neurons Sociology