Conflict inside out: a theoretical approach to conflict from an agent point of view

Conflict and conflict dynamics are phenomena intertwined with social change. The ability to detect conflict it is as important as the ability to resolve conflicts effectively because conflicts can bring attention to the problematic structures in a society. In multi-agent systems (MAS), a great deal of work has been devoted to conflict resolution, but little has been discussed regarding detection or creation of conflicts. In this paper, we argue that these processes are central to the agent’s decision-making process and should be explicit in an agents’ emotional architecture. Our position is that conflict is at the core of any social interaction. Therefore, we adopt a more natural approach by articulating insights from the social sciences literature to define an explicit model of conflict using an emotional architecture of agents and considering theory-of-mind reasoning. Emotions are central to conflict and its experience; hence, conflict is a dynamic process in which emotions are responsible for activating or deactivating it in a conflict loop. In a simulation of a defined scenario scenario, we become aware of the appraisal processes that are activated when the agents are subjected to conflicts, which fit well with our model of the phenomenon.