English

Consensus, Cohesion and Connectivity

Physics and Society 2017-11-13 v8

Abstract

Social life clusters into groups held together by ties that also transmit information. When collective problems occur, group members use their ties to discuss what to do and to establish an agreement, to be reached quick enough to prevent discounting the value of the group decision. The speed at which a group reaches consensus can be predicted by the algebraic connectivity of the network, which also imposes a lower bound on the group's cohesion. This specific measure of connectivity is put to the test by re-using experimental data, which confirm the prediction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.00614,
  title  = {Consensus, Cohesion and Connectivity},
  author = {Jeroen Bruggeman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.00614},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:41:11.202Z