An agent model and its gaming simulation reproducing the emergence of a minority

Bullying is a social problem that needs to be solved for happiness and well-being of the individuals. For junior high school students to make friends, it is very important that they find a common set of values, such as similar interests, the same hobbies, or some kind of common activity or striving. However, there is a minority of students who are unable to find a set of values in common with others, and these students are potential victims of bullying. To describe this phenomenon, we proposed a formalized agent-based model, both for the formation of a group and the exclusion of a minority, in order to clarify the mechanism by which a minority emerges. Secondly, in order to model real organizational and social phenomena, we upgraded the model to a hybrid multi-agent system consisting of both human and machine agents, in which a player could participate as in gaming. In this so-called multi-agent system model a player would be able to interact with the machine agents, which were controlled by the stochastic rules of the model. The game was made similar to amusement games by using interesting illustrations. We carried out a preliminary examination with a junior high school student playing the game and as a result, the appropriate number of parameters was determined.