The Boundaries of Cognition and Decision Making

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter outlines the role that individual-level empirical evidence gathered from psychological experiments and surveys can play in informing agent-based models, and the model-based approach more broadly. To begin with, we provide an overview of the way that this empirical evidence can be used to inform agent-based models. Additionally, we provide three detailed exemplars that outline the development and implementation of experiments conducted to inform an agent-based model of asylum migration, as well as how such data can be used. There is also an extended discussion of important considerations and potential limitations when conducting laboratory or online experiments and surveys, followed by a brief introduction to exciting new developments in experimental methodology, such as gamification and virtual reality, that have the potential to address some of these limitations and open the door to promising and potentially very fruitful new avenues of research.