Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userGeneralized Opinion Dynamics from Local Optimization Rules
104
0
0.0
(
0
)
Added by
Anand Sarwate
Publication date
2014
fields
Informatics Engineering
and research's language is
English
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
We study generalizations of the Hegselmann-Krause (HK) model for opinion dynamics, incorporating features and parameters that are natural components of observed social systems. The first generalization is one where the strength of influence depends on the distance of the agents opinions. Under this setup, we identify conditions under which the opinions converge in finite time, and provide a qualitative characterization of the equilibrium. We interpret the HK model opinion update rule as a quadratic cost-minimization rule. This enables a second generalization: a family of update rules which possess different equilibrium properties. Subsequently, we investigate models in which a external force can behave strategically to modulate/influence user updates. We consider cases where this external force can introduce additional agents and cases where they can modify the cost structures for other agents. We describe and analyze some strategies through which such modulation may be possible in an order-optimal manner. Our simulations demonstrate that generalized dynamics differ qualitatively and quantitatively from traditional HK dynamics.
rate research
Read More
This work explores models of opinion dynamics with opinion-dependent connectivity. Our starting point is that individuals have limited capabilities to engage in interactions with their peers. Motivated by this observation, we propose a continuous-time opinion dynamics model such that interactions take place with a limited number of peers: we refer to these interactions as topological, as opposed to metric interactions that are postulated in classical bounded-confidence models. We observe that topological interactions produce equilibria that are very robust to perturbations.
Social dynamics models may present discontinuities in the right-hand side of the dynamics for multiple reasons, including topology changes and quantization. Several concepts of generalized solutions for discontinuous equations are available in the literature and are useful to analyze these models. In this chapter, we study Caratheodory and Krasovsky generalized solutions for discontinuous models of opinion dynamics with state dependent interactions. We consider two definitions of bounded confidence interactions, which we respectively call metric and topological: in the former, individuals interact if their opinions are closer than a threshold; in the latter, individuals interact with a fixed number of nearest neighbors. We compare the dynamics produced by the two kinds of interactions, in terms of existence, uniqueness and asymptotic behavior of different types of solutions.
Traditional opinion dynamics models are simple and yet, enough to explore the consequences in basic scenarios. But, to better describe problems such as polarization and extremism, we might need to include details about human biases and other cognitive characteristics. In this paper, I explain how we can describe and use mental models and assumptions of the agents using Bayesian-inspired model building. The relationship between human rationality and Bayesian methods will be explored, and we will see that Bayesian ideas can indeed be used to explain how humans reason. We will see how to use Bayesian-inspired rules using the simplest version of the Continuous Opinions and Discrete Actions (CODA) model. From that, we will explore how we can obtain update rules that include human behavioral characteristics such as confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, or our tendency to change opinions much less than we should. Keywords: Opinion dynamics, Bayesian methods, Cognition, CODA, Agent-based models
It is known that individual opinions on different policy issues often align to a dominant ideological dimension (e.g. left vs. right) and become increasingly polarized. We provide an agent-based model that reproduces these two stylized facts as emergent properties of an opinion dynamics in a multi-dimensional space of continuous opinions. The mechanisms for the change of agents opinions in this multi-dimensional space are derived from cognitive dissonance theory and structural balance theory. We test assumptions from proximity voting and from directional voting regarding their ability to reproduce the expected emerging properties. We further study how the emotional involvement of agents, i.e. their individual resistance to change opinions, impacts the dynamics. We identify two regimes for the global and the individual alignment of opinions. If the affective involvement is high and shows a large variance across agents, this fosters the emergence of a dominant ideological dimension. Agents align their opinions along this dimension in opposite directions, i.e. create a state of polarization.
Structural balance theory has been developed in sociology and psychology to explain how interacting agents, e.g., countries, political parties, opinionated individuals, with mixed trust and mistrust relationships evolve into polarized camps. Recent results have shown that structural balance is necessary for polarization in networks with fixed, strongly connected neighbor relationships when the opinion dynamics are described by DeGroot-type averaging rules. We develop this line of research in this paper in two steps. First, we consider fixed, not necessarily strongly connected, neighbor relationships. It is shown that if the network includes a strongly connected subnetwork containing mistrust, which influences the rest of the network, then no opinion clustering is possible when that subnetwork is not structurally balanced; all the opinions become neutralized in the end. In contrast, it is shown that when that subnetwork is indeed structurally balanced, the agents of the subnetwork evolve into two polarized camps and the opinions of all other agents in the network spread between these two polarized opinions. Second, we consider time-varying neighbor relationships. We show that the opinion separation criteria carry over if the conditions for fixed graphs are extended to joint graphs. The results are developed for both discrete-time and continuous-time models.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
