Identifying conditional norms in multi-agent societies

Abstract

Most works on norms have investigated how norms are regulated using institutional mechanisms which assume that agents know the norms of the society they are situated in. Few research works have focused on how an agent may infer the norms of a society without the norm being explicitly given to the agent. These works do not address how an agent can identify conditional norms. In this paper we describe a mechanism that an agent can use to identify conditional norms which makes use of our previously proposed norm identification framework. Using park littering as an example, we show how conditional norms can be identified. In addition, we discuss the experimental results on the dynamic addition, modification and deletion of conditional norms. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.