An agent-based model of the formation and evolution of common ground

Abstract

The existence of a communal common ground is vital for collective action and coordination in a population, but the micro-level cognitive and social processes that lead to the formation and evolution of common ground at the macro-level are undertheorised and have not been rigorously explored. In this work, we adopt a formal approach and develop an agent-based model that describes repeated grounding attempts between agents interacting on a network, with an explicit distinction between a sender agent and a receiver agent during an interaction involving sharing information. Several key novel features enable us to capture a range of different interaction contexts: we allow for the interaction to result in either acceptance or rejection, the receiver's response may be lost to the sender, and the sender can interpret this lack of response as either acceptance or rejection (or even something in between). A campaign of Monte Carlo simulations reveals how different interaction contexts, as well as the available information for sharing, result in different emergent phenomena, such as a global communal common ground, fragmentation into multiple clusters of differing common ground, and even the total loss of any shared common ground. This work highlights the potential for using mathematical models to study micro-macro links in cultural dynamics, including identifying ways to facilitate interactions to foster the emergence of a global communal common ground.