Disentangling Cognitive and Constructivist Aspects of Hierarchies

Stefano Bennati

2015

Abstract

One of the most puzzling problems in the social sciences is the emergence of social institutions. The field of sociology is trying to understand why our society is the way we know it and whether an alternative, possibly better, society would be possible. One of the fundamental questions is the emergence of hierarchies. The cognitive approach suggests that hierarchies are encoded in human nature, therefore are the most natural form of organization; on the other hand the costructivist approach sees hierarchies as a product of interactions between individuals that emerges independently of individual preferences. We will investigate under which conditions hierarchies emerge from a cognitive factor, a constructivist factor or a combination of both. We will study this question both at the analytic level, with the help of Agent-Based simulations where agents are Neural Networks, and at the empirical level by running sociological experiments in our laboratory.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Bennati S. (2015). Disentangling Cognitive and Constructivist Aspects of Hierarchies . In Doctoral Consortium - DCAART, (ICAART 2015) ISBN , pages 10-14


in Bibtex Style

@conference{dcaart15,
author={Stefano Bennati},
title={Disentangling Cognitive and Constructivist Aspects of Hierarchies},
booktitle={Doctoral Consortium - DCAART, (ICAART 2015)},
year={2015},
pages={10-14},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={},
isbn={},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Doctoral Consortium - DCAART, (ICAART 2015)
TI - Disentangling Cognitive and Constructivist Aspects of Hierarchies
SN -
AU - Bennati S.
PY - 2015
SP - 10
EP - 14
DO -