Session 01 - Introduction

Intro to theory 1 - First steps in modeling

Overview

Topic Duration Notes
Introduction 5 Instructor introduction
Introduction of students in the plenum 15 Guiding questions: Name, home town, why chose this Empra. Write your name tag.
Formalia 20 Slides
Lecture: Introduction: Theory crisis 90 Slides
Wrap up [Homework 2]: Smaldino (2013), Chapter 1 15
Git Tutorial troubleshooting 20
Mini Introduction VAST 30 Slides

Homework 1 (individually)

Goals: Learn how to pull, commit, and push to Github. Be able to resolve a merge conflict.

  1. Create a Github account. (Skip if you have one already).
  2. Send your Github user name to me via email. I will give you access to the course’s private Homework Repository: https://github.com/nicebread/FOMO-homework_2024. (Note: You won’t be able to access, clone, or even see the repository until the lecturer has granted you access).

If you are proficient in git, you can skip step 3:

  1. Do the tutorial “Introduction to Version Control in R with RStudio, Git, and Github”, and complete the follow-up tutorial “Collaborative coding with GitHub and RStudio”. Depending on your prior knowledge, completing both tutorials will take between 30 min. and 2.5h.
  2. Once you have been granted access to the Homework Repository, clone the repository to your local machine. (This cannot be done on an iPad or smartphone; you need a computer for that.)

Deliverable:

Push your answer from Homework 2 (see below) to the folder homework/01-Smaldino-chapter of the remote repository (i.e., first save your file locally in the respective folder, then commit and push).

Homework 2 (individually)

Download Chapter 1 of Paul Smaldino’s Book “Modeling Social Behavior: Mathematical and Agent-Based Models of Social Dynamics and Cultural Evolution”. Read the chapter and answer the following guiding questions:

  1. A typical criticism of formal models is: “You baked your results into the model, so the conclusions are trivial”. What could you answer to such a statement?
  1. What is done in a “decomposition”?
  1. What question should guide the decomposition?
  1. What is, according to Smaldino, the key difference between exact and inexact sciences?
  1. Name the two types of models that typically are employed in social sciences.

Deliverable: Submit answers to the guiding questions as a plain text or markdown file to the course’s Homework Repository:

  • Navigate to /homework/01-Smaldino-chapter (After you cloned the repository in Homework 1, you should have that folder somewhere on your local machine.)
  • Add your answers as .txt or .md file with your first name as filename (e.g., “Heinz-Ruediger.md”)
  • commit and push
  • (To verify your submission: If you go to the website of the repository, you should see your file in the folder 01-Smaldino-chapter.)

You can answer in English or in German. Most questions can be easily answered in one sentence. Feel free to copy and paste the relevant sentences from the paper. If you are tempted to use ChatGPT, better don’t do the homework at all (after all, the goal of this exercise is that you learn something, not that you make your lecturer happy).

Using git for the first time can be challenging. But it’s a skill that will pay off in the long run. If you get stuck, and made honest attempts to solve the problems yourself, don’t get desperate: Just send me your homework via email, and we will sort it out together in the next session.

Homework 3 (individually): Read the VAST paper

Read the VAST paper:

Leising, D., Grenke, O., & Cramer, M. (2023). Visual Argument Structure Tool (VAST) Version 1.0. Meta-Psychology, 7. https://open.lnu.se/index.php/metapsychology/article/view/2911

Deliverable: Nothing - just read it and understand it.

Homework 4 (individually): Your first (mini) VAST display

This homework consists of three steps, A, B, and C:

  1. Read the original definition of the concept “diffusion of responsibility”, printed below. Darley and Latané introduced the term in 1968, it’s even in the title of the publication: “Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility.”

These are the paragraphs that describe the concept (p. 377f):

[After introducing the case of Kitty Genovese:] “In certain circumstances, the norms favoring intervention may be weakened, leading bystanders to resolve the conflict in the direction of nonintervention. One of these circumstances may be the presence of other onlookers. For example, in the case above, each observer, by seeing lights and figures in other apartment house windows, knew that others were also watching. However, there was no way to tell how the other observers were reacting. These two facts provide several reasons why any individual may have delayed or failed to help. The responsibility for helping was diffused among the observers; there was also diffusion of any potential blame for not taking action; and finally, it was possible that somebody, unperceived, had already initiated helping action.

When only one bystander is present in an emergency, if help is to come, it must come from him. Although he may choose to ignore it (out of concern for his personal safety, or desires “not to get involved”), any pressure to intervene focuses uniquely on him. When there are several observers present, however, the pressures to intervene do not focus on any one of the observers; instead the responsibility for intervention is shared among all the onlookers and is not unique to any one. As a result, no one helps.

A second possibility is that potential blame may be diffused. However much we may wish to think that an individual’s moral behavior is divorced from considerations of personal punishment or reward, there is both theory and evidence to the contrary (Aronfreed, 1964; Miller & Bollard, 1941, Whiting & Child, 19S3). It is perfectly reasonable to assume that, under circumstances of group responsibility for a punishable act, the punishment or blame that accrues to any one individual is often slight or nonexistent.

Finally, if others are known to be present, but their behavior cannot be closely observed, any one bystander can assume that one of the other observers is already taking action to end the emergency. Therefore, his own intervention would be only redundant—perhaps harmfully or confusingly so. Thus, given the presence of other onlookers whose behavior cannot be observed, any given bystander can rationalize his own inaction by convincing himself that “somebody else must be doing something.”

  1. Draw your first (mini) VAST display for the definition of the concept “diffusion of responsibility” with draw.io (see concrete instructions below under “Deliverable”). As you noted, Darley and Latané provide no explicit section stating “Diffusion of responsibility is defined as …”. Therefore, you need to capture the essential elements of their definition yourself; do it precisely but also concisely in your VAST display.

  2. After you created your VAST display, read a more recent summary of the concept in the Dorsch Lexikon der Psychologie, in particular the first and the third (last) paragraph. Write a few sentences, elaborating to what extent this definition is compatible to your own VAST display, and where it deviates.

Deliverable: For task 4B, save your draw.io VAST diagram in our Homework Repository by choosing “Github” as destination for your file:

Then choose the Homework Repository:

… and navigate to the correct homework folder:

Save the diagram with your name as filename (homework/02-VAST/YOURNAME.drawio). Additionally, save the diagram as a .png or .jpg file in the same folder (homework/02-VAST/YOURNAME.png).

For task 4C, save a file with your answers in the same folder (homework/02-VAST/YOURNAME.md). Don’t forget to push everything to the remote repo.