The Computational Model

This chapter introduces Affinity, a computational agent-based simulation model implemented in Java, that simulates a community of agents that hold certain values concerning social objects and other concerns. Agents form different types of relationships with each other: Friendship, care giving/receiving, and leader-follower. These relationships are informed by some aspects of human personhood and relationality, but are not exact models of human personhood and relationality. They simplify and abstract away from some important details of real human relationships in order to expose some of the information-processing principles that may underly relationships in general. The following chapters provide more discussion of specific features of Affinity.