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Andreas Flache
Tel: (+31) 50/3636214
Fax: (+31) 50/3636226
Email: a dot flache at rug dot nl
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Department of
Sociology
ICS
University of Groningen
Grote Rozenstraat 31
9712 TG Groningen
The Netherlands
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Last Update: January, 16, 2012
Welcome to my homepage. I am professor of sociology (adunct-hoogleraar Sociologie, in
het bijzonder de modellering
van normen en netwerken) at the Department
of Sociology and the ICS,
at the University of Groningen. I study in particular modeling of norms and
networks. Here you find more information about my work and about myself:
Institutional
affiliations:
I am professor of sociology (adjunct hoogleraar) at
the Department of Sociology of the
University of Groningen and board member of the research school ICS (Interuniversity Center for Social
Science Theory and Methodology). In September 2004,
I received from the Dutch Science Foundation NWO a research
grant in the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (Vernieuwingsimpuls
- VIDI) that covers a part of my employment. Here you find the VIDI-research proposal. Furthermore, I am associated member of the Institute for the Study of
Cooperative Relations (ISCORE) at the University of Utrecht. back to top of page
My
research activities:
Most of my research is concentrated in the research line “Modelling norms and networks
” located at the ICS / Department of Sociology
of the University of Groningen.
My general
research interest concerns co-operation and social integration and how this is
related to the structure and emergence of social networks. Social networks may
be both result and pre-condition of cooperative behavior. My VIDI-project links
both aspects and looks in particular into the question how networks may help (or fail to) socially integrate diverse
subgroups (see research proposal, including summary).
In my previous research project financed by the Royal
Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) from 1999 until 2004, I focused
on the possibility that under certain conditions a dense network may also make
co-operation harder to attain. An example might be a group, where people are so
strongly tied together by their friendships that they are no longer free to
impose pressure on each other when group members "free ride" in a
collective effort. I investigated this possible "double edge"
of social networks in collaboration with Michael W. Macy from Cornell University
and in my dissertation research. (related publications
are "The weakness of strong ties" by
myself and M.W. Macy (1996) and my dissertation Flache, A.
1996. The double edge of networks). My KNAW study ontinued and improved this work by making the
theoretical underpinning more general and more applicable to the social
dilemmas that might occur in real life. For a detailed description see the research proposal of my KNAW project. The follow-up study to that project
(2002-2004) tested the hypothesized double edge of networks empirically in
actual work organizations, an endavour that I
continue in my present work. You can find a final report of the KNAW project here.
Various previous studies I did were directed at the
emergence of social networks as the result of cooperation. For example,
relations of help exchange typically require some solidarity between the
partners involved. To study this aspect, I have analysed
by means of computer simulation the dynamics of help exchange networks in a
world, where individuals need each other to some degree, but they are also free
to change partners and they seek to optimize the benefits from their exchange
relations. This work is also partly continued now and was part of my KNAW
research. Before that, a large part of that research was carried out together
with Rainer Hegselmann
of the University of Bayreuth in the project ‘The dynamics of social dilemma
situations’ that was financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG). A detailed report (in German) of that research can be found in the final report of the DFG-Project (in German).
A number of related publications in English can be found in my list of publications.
The effects of different microfoundations
on the outcomes of social dilemmas have been addressed throughout the various
studies described above. More in particular, I compared in my dissertation research two micro
foundations, 1) a "backward-looking" adaptive learner who relies on
simple "trial and error" routines, and
2) a "forward-looking" strategically rational actor. I showed that
the corresponding models generate partially conflicting predictions about the
conditions under which networks may help to solve social dilemmas. In my KNAW research, I continued this comparison
and I aim to identify more precisely how and under what conditions a particular
micro foundation or a mix of various assumptions is appropriate to explain
behavior in actual social dilemmas. Results of this work are reported in
various papers (e.g., Flache, 2002; Macy & Flache 2002; Flache & Macy,
2002).
Finally, I conducted a number of studies to explore the
micro foundations of the well-known "invisible hand paradigm" in
moral philosophy. Broadly, this paradigm claims that nothing else is required
to attain desirable social outcomes than the unrestricted pursuit of happiness
of more or less egoistic and more or less rational individual actors. To
explore the paradigm, I studied by means of computer simulation how it shapes
networks of solidarity relations when 1) actors vary in their degree of
"egoism", 2) actors vary in their degree of "rationality"
and 3) actors vary in the degree to which they are risk-seeking. Some interesting
results of this are 1) that solidarity may actually suffer from too much
altruism of the individuals (see Flache & Hegselmann
1999), 2) that solidarity may actually benefit when actors are more
cognitively sophisticated (see Flache & Hegselmann
1999b) and 3) that the degree to which actors are risk-seeking may have
non-linear effects on solidarity in social exchange networks (see Flache,
2001).