Diversity and Community: The Role of Agent-Based Modeling

Community psychology involves several dialectics between potentially opposing ideals, such as theory and practice, rights and needs, and respect for human diversity and sense of community. Some recent papers in the American Journal of Community Psychology have examined the diversity-community dialectic, some with the aid of agent-based modeling and concepts from network science. This paper further elucidates these concepts and suggests that research in community psychology can benefit from a useful dialectic between agent-based modeling and the real-world concerns of community psychology. Highlights Community psychology involves several tensions between possibly opposing concepts. One such dialectic is between respect for human diversity, and sense of community. We discuss how agent-based modeling can help elucidate this dialectic. We make particular reference to the pioneering work of Schelling on residential segregation.