Related papers: Social consensus through the influence of committe…
We consider distributed plurality consensus in a complete graph of size $n$ with $k$ initial opinions. We design an efficient and simple protocol in the asynchronous communication model that ensures that all nodes eventually agree on the…
In this work we consider a model of epidemic spreading coupled with an opinion dynamics in a fully-connected population. Regarding the opinion dynamics, the individuals may be in two distinct states, namely in favor or against a vaccination…
We study the effects of social influences in opinion dynamics. In particular, we define a simple model, based on the majority rule voting, in order to consider the role of conformity. Conformity is a central issue in social psychology as it…
This study considers a variant of the bounded confidence opinion formation model wherein the probability of opinion assimilation is dependent on the relative similarity of opinions. Agents are located on a social network and decide whether…
In this paper, we study a model of opinion dynamics in a social network in the presence increasing interpersonal influence, i.e., increasing peer pressure. Each agent in the social network has a distinct social stress function given by a…
The success of a vaccination program is crucially dependent on its adoption by a critical fraction of the population, as the resulting herd immunity prevents future outbreaks of an epidemic. However, the effectiveness of a campaign can…
In several real \emph{Multi-Agent Systems} (MAS), it has been observed that only weaker forms of\emph{metastable consensus} are achieved, in which a large majority of agents agree on some opinion while other opinions continue to be…
We study finite-size effects on the convergence time in a continuous-opinion dynamics model. In the model, each individual's opinion is represented by a real number on a finite interval, e.g., $[0,1]$, and a uniformly randomly chosen…
We propose a collective opinion formation model with a so-called confirmation bias. The confirmation bias is a psychological effect with which, in the context of opinion formation, an individual in favor of an opinion is prone to…
We consider a group of agents connected by a social network who participate in majority dynamics: each agent starts with an opinion in {-1,+1} and repeatedly updates it to match the opinion of the majority of its neighbors. We assume that…
Opinion diffusion is a crucial phenomenon in social networks, often underlying the way in which a collective of agents develops a consensus on relevant decisions. The voter model is a well-known theoretical model to study opinion spreading…
We designed and ran an experiment to test how often people's choices are reversed by others' recommendations when facing different levels of confirmation and conformity pressures. In our experiment participants were first asked to provide…
We study an outcome of a vote in a population of voters exposed to an externally applied bias in favour of one of two potential candidates. The population consists of ordinary individuals, that are in majority and tend to align their…
We investigate the emergence of periodic behavior in opinion dynamics and its underlying geometry. For this, we use a bounded-confidence model with contrarian agents in a convolution social network. This means that agents adapt their…
We introduce a contrarian opinion (CO) model in which a fraction p of contrarians within a group holds a strong opinion opposite to the opinion held by the rest of the group. At the initial stage, stable clusters of two opinions, A and B…
We study a model of opinion formation where the collective decision of group is said to happen if the fraction of agents having the most common opinion exceeds a threshold value, a \textit{critical mass}. We find that there exists a unique,…
The bounded confidence model of opinion dynamics, introduced by Deffuant et al, is a stochastic model for the evolution of continuous-valued opinions within a finite group of peers. We prove that, as time goes to infinity, the opinions…
Social media has transformed global communication, yet its network structure can systematically distort perceptions through effects like the majority illusion and echo chambers. We introduce the perception gap index, a graph-based measure…
Social influence profoundly impacts individual choices and collective behaviors in politics. In this work, driven by the goal of protecting elections from improper influence, we consider the following scenario: an individual, who has vested…
I develop a rather simple agent-based model to capture a co-evolution of opinion formation, political decision making and economic outcomes. I use this model to study how societies form opinions if their members have opposing interests.…