More Like this

1. Mechanistic and Data-Driven Agent-Based Models to Explain Human Behavior in Online Networked Group Anagram Games

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3341161.3342965  

   Cedeno‑Mieles, Vanessa ; Hu, Zhihao ; Ren, Yihui ; Deng, Xinwei ; Adiga, Abhigin ; Barrett, Christopher ; Contractor, Noshir ; Ekanayake, Saliya ; Epstein, Joshua M. ; Goode, Brian J. ; et al ( January 2019 , Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining)

   In anagram games, players are provided with letters for forming as many words as possible over a specified time duration. Anagram games have been used in controlled experiments to study problems such as collective identity, effects of goal setting, internal-external attributions, test anxiety, and others. The majority of work on anagram games involves individual players. Recently, work has expanded to group anagram games where players cooperate by sharing letters. In this work, we analyze experimental data from online social networked experiments of group anagram games. We develop mechanistic and data driven models of human decision-making to predict detailed game playermore »actions (e.g., what word to form next). With these results, we develop a composite agent-based modeling and simulation platform that incorporates the models from data analysis. We compare model predictions against experimental data, which enables us to provide explanations of human decision-making and behavior. Finally, we provide illustrative case studies using agent-based simulations to demonstrate the efficacy of models to provide insights that are beyond those from experiments alone.« less
2. Approaches to Uncertainty Quantification in Building Models of Human Behavior

   Hu, Zhihao ; Deng, Xinwei ; Kuhlman, Chris J ( January 2021 , Winter Simulation Conference)

   In a group anagram game, players are provided letters to form as many words as possible. They can also request letters from their neighbors and reply to letter requests. Currently, a single agent-based model is produced from all experimental data, with dependence only on number of neighbors. In this work, we build, exercise, and evaluate enhanced agent behavior models for networked group anagram games under an uncertainty quantification framework. Specifically, we cluster game data for players based on their skill levels (forming words, requesting letters, and replying to requests), perform multinomial logistic regression for transition probabilities, and quantify uncertainty withinmore »each cluster. The result of this process is a model where players are assigned different numbers of neighbors and different skill levels in the game. We conduct simulations of ego agents with neighbors to demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed methods.« less
3. Versatile Uncertainty Quantification of Contrastive Behaviors for Modeling Networked Anagram Games

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93409-5_53  

   Hu, Zhihao ; Deng, Xinwei ; Kuhlman, Chris J ( January 2021 , Complex Networks and their Applications)

   In a networked anagram game, each team member is given a set of letters and members collectively form as many words as possible. They can share letters through a communication network in assisting their neighbors in forming words. There is variability in behaviors of players, e.g., there can be large differences in numbers of letter requests, of replies to letter requests, and of words formed among players. Therefore, it is of great importance to understand uncertainty and variability in player behaviors. In this work, we propose versatile uncertainty quantification (VUQ) of behaviors for modeling the networked anagram game. Specifically, themore »proposed methods focus on building contrastive models of game player behaviors that quantify player actions in terms of worst, average, and best performance. Moreover, we construct agent-based models and perform agent-based simulations using these VUQ methods to evaluate the model building methodology and understand the impact of uncertainty. We believe that this approach is applicable to other networked games.« less
4. Translucent players: Explaining cooperative behavior in social dilemmas

   https://doi.org/10.1177/1043463119885102  

   Capraro, Valerio ; Halpern, Joseph Y ( November 2019 , Rationality and Society)

   In the past few decades, numerous experiments have shown that humans do not always behave so as to maximize their material payoff. Cooperative behavior when noncooperation is a dominant strategy (with respect to the material payoffs) is particularly puzzling. Here we propose a novel approach to explain cooperation, assuming what Halpern and Pass call translucent players. Typically, players are assumed to be opaque, in the sense that a deviation by one player in a normal-form game does not affect the strategies used by other players. However, a player may believe that if he switches from one strategy to another, themore »fact that he chooses to switch may be visible to the other players. For example, if he chooses to defect in Prisoner’s Dilemma, the other player may sense his guilt. We show that by assuming translucent players, we can recover many of the regularities observed in human behavior in well-studied games such as Prisoner’s Dilemma, Traveler’s Dilemma, Bertrand Competition, and the Public Goods game. The approach can also be extended to take into account a player’s concerns that his social group (or God) may observe his actions. This extension helps explain prosocial behavior in situations in which previous models of social behavior fail to make correct predictions (e.g. conflict situations and situations where there is a trade-off between equity and efficiency).« less
5. Simple Uncoupled No-Regret Learning Dynamics for Extensive-Form Correlated Equilibrium

   Farina, G. ; Celli, A. ; Marchesi, A. ; Gatti, N. ( January 2021 , ArXivorg)

   The existence of simple uncoupled no-regret learning dynamics that converge to correlated equilibria in normal-form games is a celebrated result in the theory of multi-agent systems. Specifically, it has been known for more than 20 years that when all players seek to minimize their internal regret in a repeated normal-form game, the empirical frequency of play converges to a normal-form correlated equilibrium. Extensive-form games generalize normal-form games by modeling both sequential and simultaneous moves, as well as imperfect information. Because of the sequential nature and presence of private information in the game, correlation in extensive-form games possesses significantly different propertiesmore »than its counterpart in normal-form games, many of which are still open research directions. Extensive-form correlated equilibrium (EFCE) has been proposed as the natural extensive-form counterpart to the classical notion of correlated equilibrium in normal-form games. Compared to the latter, the constraints that define the set of EFCEs are significantly more complex, as the correlation device must keep into account the evolution of beliefs of each player as they make observations throughout the game. Due to that significant added complexity, the existence of uncoupled learning dynamics leading to an EFCE has remained a challenging open research question for a long time. In this article, we settle that question by giving the first uncoupled no-regret dynamics that converge to the set of EFCEs in n-player general-sum extensive-form games with perfect recall. We show that each iterate can be computed in time polynomial in the size of the game tree, and that, when all players play repeatedly according to our learning dynamics, the empirical frequency of play is proven to be a O(T^-0.5)-approximate EFCE with high probability after T game repetitions, and an EFCE almost surely in the limit.« less