Easy-to-use simulations of human behavior

Question

I'm interested in simulations of human behavior.

Nicky Case has done some really good ones:

https://ncase.me/trust/ - A simulation of repeated prisoner's dilemma under different scenarios, showing how trust can be built and destroyed between people.

https://ncase.me/crowds/ - A simulation of memes spreading in a society, and how the relations between people affect whether a meme will spread or not.

I like the fact that they are easy for people to interact with, and you can learn how things that we accept just happen in society are shown to be emergent phenomena that are the result of simple behavior.

My question: Do you know of more sources of simulations like these that you can share? I'm especially interested in simulations of people's emotional connections with each other, and group dynamics.

Answer 1

Nicky Case is a tough act to follow, but there are a lot of simulations available for a variety of different theories in social psychology and behavioural economics. As such, I won't try to list them all, but provide a "list of lists" that should help you to find more.

• Wikipedia maintains a list of games in game theory. This does not link to any simulations, but it's easy enough to search Google for them. For example, here are a couple of interactive online simulations of the hawk-dove game: Single population, 2 population, and an interactive version of the Blotto game can be found here. Wikipedia also has a "list of lists". There are also several interactive simulations that are capable of modelling multiple game theory games, including the prisoner's dilemma: GTE, Oyun, Axelrod.
• NetLogo, from Northwestern University, lists a number of psychology and social science simulations in its models library (sorry no jump-to link, you'll have to scroll down to see the categories), including Rebellion "... an adaptation of Joshua Epstein's model of civil violence (2002)", the Piaget-Vygotsky Game "... to shed light on the ongoing debate between two theories of learning, constructivism and social constructivism", and Ethnocentrism based on a model by "Robert Axelrod and Ross A. Hammond".
• AnyLogic Cloud offers a variety of simulations for its platform, including agent-based models such as reinforcement learning, epidemic model, and schelling segregation, and market models such as restaurant business. Several other simulation platforms for social science and human behaviour are listed in Wikipedia's comparison of agent-based modelling software.
• A list of interactive online economics simulation games.
• An old simulation on the evolution of social norms.

The above lists are all free; the catalogue would be much larger if you add paid services such as classroom education software.