@inproceedings {2021,
	title = {Adaptation-By-Proxy: Contagion Effect of Social Buffering in an Artificial Society},
	booktitle = {ALIFE 2021: The 2021 Conference on Artificial Life},
	year = {2021},
	note = {<a href="https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal/90/102917">Download</a> (Open Access)
},
	month = {07/2021},
	publisher = {The MIT Press},
	organization = {The MIT Press},
	abstract = {The {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright} phenomenon proposes that social support facilitates wellbeing by reducing stress in a number of different ways. While this phenomenon may benefit agents with social support from others, its potential effects on the wider social group are less clear. Using a biologically-inspired artificial life model, we have investigated how some of the hypothesised hormonal mechanisms that underpin the {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright} phenomenon affect the wellbeing and interactions of agents without social support across numerous social and physical contexts. We tested these effects in a small, rank-based society, with half of the agents endowed with numerous hormonal mechanisms associated with {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright}, and half without. Surprisingly, our results found that these {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright} mechanisms provided survival-related advantages to agents without social support across numerous conditions. We found that agents with socially-adaptive mechanisms themselves become a proxy for adaptation, and suggest that, in some (artificial) societies, {\textquotedblleft}social buffering{\textquotedblright} may be a contagious phenomenon.},
	doi = {10.1162/isal_a_00424},
	url = {https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal/90/102917},
	author = {Imran Khan and Lola Ca{\~n}amero}
}
