Trust In Agent Societies

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Trust in Agent Societies, TRUST 2008, held in Estoril, Portugal, in the context of AAMAS 2008, the main international conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions; they are fully revised to incorporate reviewers' comments and discussions at the workshop. The volume is organized in ternary topical sections on theoretical and applicative aspects of trust (from a engineering, cognitive, computational, sociological point of view), on formal models in the field of applied logic and applied mathematics, and finally on models of reputation systems, theory-driven and empirically backed-up guidelines for designing reputation technologies, and analysis and discussion of existing reputation systems.

Based on two international workshops on trust in agent societies, held at AAMAS 2003 and AAMAS 2004, this book draws together carefully revised papers on trust, reputation, and security in agent society. Besides workshop papers, several contributions from leading researchers in this interdisciplinary field were solicited to complete coverage of all relevant topics. The 13 papers presented take into account issues from multiagent systems, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, game theory, and social and organizational science. Theoretical topics are addressed as well as applications in human-computer interaction and e-commerce.

This book is the result of the workshop “Deception, Fraud, and Trust in Agent Societies”, held in Barcelona on June 4, 2000 as part of the Autonomous Agents 2000 Conference, and organized by Rino Falcone, Munindar Singh, and Yao-Hua Tan. The aim of the workshop was to bring together researchers from di?- ent ?elds (Arti?cial Intelligence, Multi-Agent Systems, Cognitive Science, Game Theory, and Social and Organizational Sciences) that could contribute to a b- ter understanding of trust and deception in agent societies. The workshop scope included theoretical results as well as their applications in human-computer - teraction and electronic commerce. This book includes the revised and extended versions of the works presented at the workshop, incorporating many points that emerged in our discussions, as well as invited papers from experts in the ?eld, which in our view allows a complete coverage of all relevant issues. We gratefully acknowledge the ?nancial support from the Italian National Research Council - Institute for Cognitive S- ence and Technology and the ALFEBIITE European Project, contract number IST-1999-10298. We would like to express our gratitude to Cristiano Castelfranchi for his stimulating and valuable comments and suggestions both for the organization of the workshop and for the preparation of this book.

Trust plays a pervasive role in social affairs, even sustaining acts of cooperation among strangers who have no control over each other's actions. But the full importance of trust is rarely acknowledged until it begins to break down, threatening the stability of social relationships once taken for granted. Trust in Society uses the tools of experimental psychology, sociology, political science, and economics to shed light on the many functions trust performs in social and political life. The authors discuss different ways of conceptualizing trust and investigate the empirical effects of trust in a variety of social settings, from the local and personal to the national and institutional. Drawing on experimental findings, this book examines how people decide whom to trust, and how a person proves his own trustworthiness to others. Placing trust in a person can be seen as a strategic act, a moral response, or even an expression of social solidarity. People often assume that strangers are trustworthy on the basis of crude social affinities, such as a shared race, religion, or hometown. Likewise, new immigrants are often able to draw heavily upon the trust of prior arrivals—frequently kin—to obtain work and start-up capital. Trust in Society explains how trust is fostered among members of voluntary associations—such as soccer clubs, choirs, and church groups—and asks whether this trust spills over into other civic activities of wider benefit to society. The book also scrutinizes the relationship between trust and formal regulatory institutions, such as the law, that either substitute for trust when it is absent, or protect people from the worst consequences of trust when it is misplaced. Moreover, psychological research reveals how compliance with the law depends more on public trust in the motives of the police and courts than on fear of punishment. The contributors to this volume demonstrate the growing analytical sophistication of trust research and its wide-ranging explanatory power. In the interests of analytical rigor, the social sciences all too often assume that people act as atomistic individuals without regard to the interests of others. Trust in Society demonstrates how we can think rigorously and analytically about the many aspects of social life that cannot be explained in those terms. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust!--

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Deception, Fraud, and Trust in Agent Societies, held in Bologna, Italy in July 2002 during AAMAS 2002. Most papers presented were carefully selected from the workshop contributions during two rounds of reviewing and revision; a few papers were particularly solicited in order to provide complete coverage of all relevant topics. All relevant aspects of the field are addressed.

This book is the result of the workshop “Deception, Fraud, and Trust in Agent Societies”, held in Barcelona on June 4, 2000 as part of the Autonomous Agents 2000 Conference, and organized by Rino Falcone, Munindar Singh, and Yao-Hua Tan. The aim of the workshop was to bring together researchers from di?- ent ?elds (Arti?cial Intelligence, Multi-Agent Systems, Cognitive Science, Game Theory, and Social and Organizational Sciences) that could contribute to a b- ter understanding of trust and deception in agent societies. The workshop scope included theoretical results as well as their applications in human-computer - teraction and electronic commerce. This book includes the revised and extended versions of the works presented at the workshop, incorporating many points that emerged in our discussions, as well as invited papers from experts in the ?eld, which in our view allows a complete coverage of all relevant issues. We gratefully acknowledge the ?nancial support from the Italian National Research Council - Institute for Cognitive S- ence and Technology and the ALFEBIITE European Project, contract number IST-1999-10298. We would like to express our gratitude to Cristiano Castelfranchi for his stimulating and valuable comments and suggestions both for the organization of the workshop and for the preparation of this book.

Innovations and Advances in Computer Sciences and Engineering includes a set of rigorously reviewed world-class manuscripts addressing and detailing state-of-the-art research projects in the areas of Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Systems Engineering and Sciences. Innovations and Advances in Computer Sciences and Engineering includes selected papers form the conference proceedings of the International Conference on Systems, Computing Sciences and Software Engineering (SCSS 2008) which was part of the International Joint Conferences on Computer, Information and Systems Sciences and Engineering (CISSE 2008).