Modelling Social Attitudes of Agents

Several recent investigations in the field of multiple agent systems have shown interest in the problem of regulating agents behaviour with rules that ought to be obeyed by the agents when the agents are not enforced to comply to the rules themselves. Multiple Agent Systems where agents exhibit attitudes with respect to the above mentioned aspects are named Ethical MAS. A family of interesting problems in Ethical MAS are introduced. We then consider two sample interpretations, one based upon simple commitment to the law and to personal interest, and one based on the commitment to legality, the attention to social utility and the interest in personal advantage. Based on these three aspects we provide a classification of social attitudes of agents in EMAS