用大模型模拟社会,发现人际关系会自发形成等级与分工。
Emergent Relational Order in LLM Agent Societies: From Collective Affect to Authority Stratification

- 基于情绪-伦理-信念链的多智能体框架,动态生成个体身份。
- 长期仿真中自发出现五类社会结构现象,如关系疏远导致合作减弱。
- 适合研究社会演化、组织行为的学者,也适用于人机社会系统设计。
费孝通的差序格局理论将乡土社会描述为以自我为中心、关系分层的结构,合作随社会距离衰减。尽管常被视为文化特例,其机制基础仍缺乏操作化建模,以往基于大模型的模拟多聚焦短期协调,而非长周期社会结构。本文提出CAREB-MAS多智能体框架,融合情绪控制理论、社会认同理论与涂尔干集体情感理论。智能体通过情绪-伦理-信念链推理,维持动态演变的自我中心身份;宏观环境仅设定个体生产、偏好分配及最小交互协议。在长期模拟中,智能体自发再现五类差序格局特征:稳定的劳动分工、基于关系的人情经济伦理、合作随关系疏远而衰减、涌现的相对权威结构,以及基于宗族的中心-外围分层。这些模式随生产结构从血缘中心转向更高功能互赖。大量实验结果表明,差序格局是普遍社会机制在特定条件下涌现的结构性结果,大模型多智能体仿真为社会结构与变迁研究提供了跨学科框架。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Fei Xiaotong's Differential Order Pattern characterizes rural society as egocentric and relationally graded, with cooperation attenuating over social distance. Although often treated as culturally specific, its mechanistic basis remains under-operationalized, and prior LLM-based simulations have mainly addressed short-term coordination rather than long-horizon social structure. We propose CAREB-MAS, a multi-agent framework grounded in Affect Control Theory, Social Identity Theory, and Durkheimian collective affect. Agents reason through an emotion-ethics-belief chain and maintain dynamically evolving egocentric identities, while the macro environment specifies only individual production, preference-based allocation, and minimal interaction protocols. Across long-horizon simulations, agents spontaneously reproduce five core Differential Order phenomena: stable labor specialization, guanxi-based economic ethics, relational decay of cooperation, emergent relational authority, and clan-based center-periphery stratification. These patterns shift with production structure from kin-centered integration toward greater functional interdependence. Extensive experiment results support interpreting Differential Order as a structure-sensitive emergent outcome of general social mechanisms, with LLM-based multi-agent simulation providing an interdisciplinary framework for studying social structure and change.
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