It is commonly agreed upon that
misperception
is detrimental. However, misperception might have a beneficial
effect from a collective viewpoint when individuals mispercept
incoming information that promotes a specific kind of behavior,
which leads to an increase in diversity. First, this paper proposes
our hypothesis regarding adaptive property of misperception based on
the argument of the relationship between misperception and
behavioral diversity, and the effects of communication on diversity.
Then, a simple computational model is constructed for a
resource-searching problem by using the
multi-agent
modeling method. We investigate both
direct misperception, that are caused when obtaining information
directly from surrounding environment, and indirect misperception,
that are caused when obtaining information indirectly through
communication by conducting simulation experiments. The experimental
results have shown that misperception could increase diversity in
behavior of agents, thus could be adaptive, while accurate
communication could decrease a diversity of agent behavior, which
might decrease fitness. This paper also discusses a correlative
relationship between direct misperception and indirect
misperception. We believe that the study on adaptive property of
misperception based on an innovative frame of reference and a
powerful methodology in the field of complex system or artificial
life would shed light on fundamental issues in cognitive science,
memetics
and engineering.