Socio-Cultural Modeling through Decision-Theoretic Agents with Theory of Mind

PsychSim is an agent-based social simulation framework that captures a wide range of the individual and cultural differences exhibited in complex social scenarios. PsychSim takes a decision-theoretic approach to modeling Theory of Mind, giving its agents a rich space of beliefs and preferences. PsychSim also uses a unique piecewise linear representation language that allows it to reason backward from observed behavior to infer consistent parameter settings. We first applied PsychSim to the exploratory simulation of influence campaigns in the face of a heterogeneous socio-cultural arena of operations. More recently, we have used PsychSim in a range of simulation-based training systems designed to teach skills such as the correct use of language, gestures, and social norms of a foreign culture, cross-cultural negotiation, avoidance of risky behavior, and urban stabilization op-