Reasoning about Norm Compliance with Rational Agents

This paper presents a model for rational self-interested agents, which takes into account the possibility of violating norms. The transgressions take place when the expected rewards obtained with the defection from the norms surpass the expected rewards obtained by being norm-compliant. To develop such model, we employ Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Our approach consists of representing the reactions for norm violations within the MDPs in such a way that the agent is able to reason about how those violations affect her expected utilities and future options.