konstanz-dynamic-social-behavior

University of Konstanz 2026 · Summer Semester Thursdays, 13:30–15:00

Schedule

Phase	Week	Date	Topic/Activity
Generating Ideas	🟦 1	09 Apr	Introduction
	🟦 2	16 Apr	Game Theory · Guest: Azza Bouleimen
	🟦 3	23 Apr	Multi-agent dynamics and theory of mind
	🟦 4	30 Apr	Can LLMs simulate humans?
	🟦 5	07 May	Emergent behavior and world simulations
		14 May	no lecture
	🟦 6	21 May	Learning to cooperate
	🟦 7	28 May	RL as institution designer
Scientific Contribution		04 Jun	no lecture
	🟨 8	11 Jun	Guest Lecture: Dailisan & Argota Sánchez-Vaquerizo
	🟨 9	18 Jun	Guest Lecture: Dino Carpentras
	🟨 10	25 Jun	Preliminary Results Presentations
	🟨 11	02 Jul	1:1 Clinic
Marketing Your Idea	🟩 12	09 Jul	1:1 Clinic
	🟩 13	16 Jul	Final Presentations
	⬜	15 Aug	Final revision & submit

Slides: https://slides.com/carinah/modeling-behavior Overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/6524355567nxbgzdwdmgkt#655081

Activities

1. Reading Notes (ungraded)

For each reading, you should briefly (1 sentence each, via Overleaf):

What is one specific idea or result you found interesting, and why?
What is one point that remains unclear? What specific question would you ask in class?
How could this paper be extended? For example, could its methods be applied in a different context? Can its data be analyzed in a different way?

2. Discussant Role (graded, 30%)

You will serve once (or twice, depending on class size) as a discussant for your chosen reading(s).
Your role is to help the class understand the paper in depth and to generate ideas for replication or extension.
You will give a short (10–15 min) presentation and lead a brief (5–8 min) discussion.

3. Research Project (graded, 70%)

Your goal is to develop an original research paper that builds on the course literature. You may work individually or in small groups.

Only final paper (~8 pages / 4,000–8,000 words) will be graded. In addition, submitting the following milestones is mandatory:

Week 8 (11 Jun): Submit your project idea
Week 9 (18 Jun): Submit your research narrative / introduction and identify the literature gap
Week 10 (25 Jun): Present initial results, explain their relevance, and set up a GitHub repository
Week 11 (02 Jul): Submit a first full draft
Week 12 (09 Jul): Prepare slides, a practice presentation, and a social media-style summary (no need to publish)
Week 13 (16 Jul): Final presentation

Readings for Paper Discussions (graded)

Week 3 (23 Apr) — Multi-agent dynamics and theory of mind
- Simulating Subjects: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence Stand-Ins for Social Agents and Interactions Kozlowski & Evans 2025
Week 4 (30 Apr) — Can LLMs simulate humans?
- Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior Park 2023
- LLM Agents Grounded in Self-Reports Enable General-Purpose Simulation of Individuals Park 2024
- Predicting Results of Social Science Experiments Using Large Language Models Hewitt 2024
- LLM Social Simulations Are a Promising Research Method Anthis 2025
Week 5 (07 May) — Emergent behavior and world simulations
- Project Sid: Many-agent Simulations toward AI Civilization Altera 2024
- Emergent Social Conventions and Collective Bias in LLM Populations Ashery 2025
- Can We Fix Social Media? Testing Prosocial Interventions using Generative Social Simulation Larooij & Törnberg 2025
Week 6 (21 May) — Learning to cooperate
- Language Agents with Reinforcement Learning for Strategic Play in the Werewolf Game Xu 2023
- Reinforcement Learning in a Prisoner’s Dilemma Dolgopolov 2024
- Scaffolding Cooperation in Human Groups with Deep Reinforcement Learning Koster 2023
- Human-level Play in the Game of Diplomacy by Combining Language Models with Strategic Reasoning Meta FAIR 2022
Week 7 (28 May) — RL as institution designer
- Deep Mechanism Design: Learning Social and Economic Policies for Human Benefit Koster 2024
- Deep Reinforcement Learning Can Promote Sustainable Human Behaviour in a Common-Pool Resource Problem Koster 2025

Student Projects

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