describes how people behave while being part of a group, how groups interact and how these interactions and ‘appropriate group behaviours’ can change over time. Agent-based modelling on the other hand, is a powerful approach to address complex social science questions in ways that allow for studying over-time dynamics and causal mechanisms in a systematic and controlled manner. Formalising SIA in ABM enables the use of models that are aligned with empirical realities and/or insights accumulated in the social sciences. An alignment that is often lacking in models used to inform policy decision making.