ABSTRACT

This paper discusses an approach to study conflict resolution as a socio-cognitive dynamic decision making process. Our approach unifies computational and experimental methods to balance the realism of complex cross-cultural interaction with the experimental control of abstracted conflict from Game Theory. We offer an innovative approach to the study of conflict resolution as a dynamic decision making (DDM) process, in which we develop a socio-cognitive computational theory of conflict resolution. We present our use of commercial games that address particular cases of international conflict, such as PeaceMaker (lmpactGamcs, 2006). PeaceMaker is an interactive representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that we use in controlled laboratory experiments to study the influence of diverse socio-cognitive variables. We also develop our own DDM games that address conflict more generically. We present our extension of the traditional Prisoner Dilemma 2x2 game, into an iterative group game, the Iterative Prisoner DilemmaSquared (JPD/\2), that enriches the possibilities to study the dynamics of group behavior through computational cognitive modeling.