Toward minimally social behavior: Social psychology meets evolutionary robotics

Abstract

We report on a set of minimalist modeling experiments that extends previous work on the dynamics of social interaction. We used an evolutionary robotics approach to fine-tune the design of a recent psychological experiment, as well as to synthesize a solution that gives clues about how humans might perform under these novel conditions. In this manner we were able to generate a number of hypotheses that are open to verification by future experiments in social psychology. In particular, the results indicate some of the advantages and disadvantages of relying on social factors for solving behavioral tasks. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.