The simulation of social exchange: developing a multidimensional model of exchange rules in human interaction.

Abstract

Social exchange underpins social structure and as such, social exchange theory has taken a central role in the field of social psychology. The study of exchange rules and how they interact with each other is an area within this theory that has not received much attention up until now. This study has aimed to study the exchange rules of fairness, reciprocity, self-interest, vicinity and ingroup favouritism within an interacting exchange network. Agent based computational modelling with a comparison to empirical data has been proposed as a novel method to uncover the process of exchange from the bottom up. The results of the study indicate that there exists no universal combination of exchange rules that can predict human behaviour in all settings. Exchange rules are adopted based on institutional norms as well as norms that emerge during interaction.