On social commitment, roles and preferred goals

We present a framework for modelling various types of influences on an agent's prioritising of its goals, with emphasis on obligations arising from the agent's roles in designated relationships. The framework is based on work of Bell and Huang on goal hierarchies and intention revision, and incorporates notions related to social goal adoption and social commitment as discussed by Castelfranchi. We use roles as an abstraction to enable the agent designer to scope the sphere of influence of one agent with respect to another. Roles then provide a way to specify how the agent should balance competing obligations from different relationships, and from tensions between personal preferences and social obligations. This approach seems to integrate well with the use of team plans for implementing collaborative behaviour.