Agent-Based Modeling of Competitive and Cooperative Behavior Under Conflict

A novel agent-based framework for modeling and simulating competitive and cooperative behavior under conflict is proposed. Formal definitions of Nash, general metarational, symmetric metarational, and sequential stability decision rules reflecting human behavior under conflict are presented in this paper. The definitions are inspired by the solution concepts of the graph model for conflict resolution and are conceived for implantation in the proposed agent-based modeling and simulation framework. With these decision rules, competitive and cooperative conflict dynamics are simulated for a theoretical common-pool resources dilemma. Moreover, policies can be tested for their effectiveness in avoiding or recouping from a tragedy of the commons.