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17 Social Constraint 437

the salience of group membership. To model such cognitive development, the agents
thus need to be embedded in micro-social structures.
In conclusion, the concepts of norms as obligations and as an abstract concept are
more closely related to concepts in empirical sciences than a mere constraint, which
might be perfectly sufficient for practical purposes. It has to be noted, however,
that they refer to different theories: the obligation concept of norms presumes an
antagonism between the individual and the society, which is in line with Durkheim
and Freud. The idea of norms as an abstract concept demands for a more active role
of the agents. This is a precondition for modelling identity. There exist very first
attempts that can be regarded as a modelling approach towards identity formation.
Yet, it has to be emphasised that these are very first steps, and much is still not
realised, such as to implement a correlation between network structures and salience
of normative orientation. However, one principle deficiency of current models and
architectures in attempting to represent the process of norm internalisation remains;
namely, that agents do not have a childhood (Guerin 2008). However, socialisation
theory describes childhood as the most important site for the internalisation of
norms. Since agents have no childhood, the process of human cognitive development
cannot be represented.

17.4 Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be retained that the interaction processes, resulting in macro-
structural constraints, are quite well understood. In particular, the perspective to
regard norms as an aggregated product of individual interactions is considerably
elaborated. This is the view of sociological rational choice theories. In particular, the
game theoretic paradigm has proved to be an effective means to study the dynamics
of collective behaviour regularities. However, it lacks of an active element of
normative orientation in the choice of the ends of action. The agents do not ‘know’
norms. Thus, these models do not capture the process of norm internalisation.
Behaviour is merely guided by adaptation of agents to changing environmental
conditions.
The role theoretic tradition emphasises that norms are structural constraints of
individual behaviour. While models of cognitive agents in the AI tradition also have
reached a substantial insights into norm dynamics, this aspect has been particularly
studied these models. They have provided considerable insights into the effects of
such structural constraints on a social macro-level. Hence, the inter-agent processes
of interaction, leading to a macro-property of some kind of normatively structured
social macro-level, are relatively good understood. There is, however, still a lot to
do with regard to achieving a comprehensive understanding of how actors produce
and are at the same time a product of social reality. While agent-based modelling
has reached a substantial understanding of inter-agent processes, an investigation of
the recursive impact on intra-agent processes is still in its fledgling stages.