A Computer Experiment in Elementary Social Behavior

This paper describes a computer simulation study of role conflict using Homunculus, an operating computer model based on George Homans' theory of elementary social behavior. The role conflict data selected for simulation come from the senior author's questionnaire study of the impact of personal preference and reference-group pressures on decisions concerning role performance. Three variations of the computer simulation are described; each successive reformulation produced an increased correlation between the behavior of the simulated and the real individuals. The results demonstrate that through computer simulation it is possible to test alternative theoretical formulations and to choose the one producing data best approximating responses from living subjects. The data generated follow as direct consequences of the information processing routines that operationally express the hypotheses; thus, the results involve no extraneous unverbalized, or unprogrammed, influences.