HC11: Psychology in silico: Investigating the limits of methods and practices in psychological science
Psychological research faces many intertwined challenges concerning theory development,
cognitive and behavioral modeling, measurement precision, replicability of results, and the
ethics of experimentation. A pressing question is: are our approaches to studying
psychology sufficient for (eventually) reaching goals such as predicting and explaining human behavior and consciousness? In this hackathon, we employ a simulation approach to start tackling this question. In particular, we create several “worlds” for researchers to investigate, each following rules that become progressively more complex. These rules are informed by challenges that researchers face when studying
psychological phenomena. For each world, an agent-based model is created and
output is provided to the teams of “scientists”. They are invited to figure out these
rules for which they can use face-value data (e.g., number of agents), perform
measurements (e.g., movement speed of agents), and conduct experiments (e.g., manipulate
the environment of the agents).