Why it’s still open
The digital minds side of robopsychology studies personas, functional emotions and motivation in single models; the collective side studies conventions, collusion and swarms. Almost nothing connects them. Some findings suggest a link — which base model is used decides whether cooperation evolves, and personas create stable roles in groups — while others show groups can match human aggregate behavior with very different individual rules.
What would count as an answer
Studies that measure individual traits (persona, emotion-like states, stated values) and use them to predict group outcomes better than chance.
Papers that tackle it
- Vallinder Hughes 2024 - Cultural evolution of cooperation — The base model decides whether cooperation evolves.
- Riedl 2025 - Emergent coordination in multi-agent LLMs — Personas create stable roles in groups.
- Erisken et al 2025 - MAEBE — Individual moral preferences don’t predict group behavior.
- Ferraz de Arruda et al 2026 - Cooperation without individual fidelity — Right aggregates, wrong individuals.
- Ashery Aiello Baronchelli 2025 - Emergent social conventions — Collective biases no individual holds.
- Akata et al 2025 - Playing repeated games with LLMs — Individual strategic tendencies in repeated games.
- Park et al 2023 - Generative agents — Individual memory and reflection producing social life.
Methods in play
- Committed-minority interventions
- Cultural-evolution simulation
- Generative agent-based modeling
- Iterated social dilemmas
- Multi-agent debate
- Naming and coordination games
- Statistical-physics modeling
Who’s closest
Placed by the editor, v1 — corrections welcome.
Related questions
- Aligned alone misaligned together
- Cumulative culture or only conventions
- Writing about a character or becoming it
- Do functional emotions matter
Questions from the Digital minds arm are linked where individual psychology meets group behavior.
Know a paper that belongs here, or think this is framed wrongly? Suggest a paper or a correction (forms on the Atlas home).