Influence of psychoanalytic defense mechanisms on the decision making process in autonomous agents

Conflicting goals, rules, and/or input data can cause problems in the decision making unit of software agents. Hence, in this paper we introduce psychoanalytic defense mechanisms to be implemented in multi-agent systems to resolve these conflicts. We give a general insight into defense mechanisms in psychoanalysis and how we transfer this theory to multi-agent systems. We describe the kinds of conflicts in the decision making process of software agents where the implementation of psychoanalytic defense mechanisms help to improve the stability of the system and to enhance the performance of the decision making unit. We explain different aspects and important notions which have to be obeyed while implementing defense mechanisms in cognitive systems. Therefore, we provide some example detection rules to find conflicting data, conflicting drives, conflicting action plans, and conflicting intentions in cognitive systems. These detection rules help to exclude unreal input data from the environment by performing a reality check. Defense mechanisms which we implemented are repression, denial, and reaction formation. Finally, we give examples for applications of defense mechanisms in cognitive systems.