Related papers: Public opinion by a poll process: model study and …
Interest is growing in social learning models where users share opinions and adjust their beliefs in response to others. This paper introduces generalized-bias opinion models, an extension of the DeGroot model, that captures a broader range…
"Wisdom of crowds" refers to the phenomenon that the average opinion of a group of individuals on a given question can be very close to the true answer. It requires a large group diversity of opinions, but the collective error, the…
The complexity of human behaviour can lead to very unpredictable patterns in social activity and structure. Here we demonstrate the instability of a community network controlled by majority ruling, where an element adopts the most popular…
The general principles of Bayesian data analysis imply that models for survey responses should be constructed conditional on all variables that affect the probability of inclusion and nonresponse, which are also the variables used in survey…
We develop a theory of estimation when in addition to a sample of $n$ observed outcomes the underlying probabilities of the observed outcomes are known, as is typically the case in the context of numerical simulation modeling, e.g. in…
A simple mathematical model is proposed to study the effect of the average trend of a population on the opinion of each individual, when a group decision has to be made by voting. It is shown that if such effect is strong enough a…
Election results are determined by numerous social factors that affect the formation of opinion of the voters, including the network of interactions between them and the dynamics of opinion influence. In this work we study the result of…
We present a model that explores the influence of persuasion in a population of agents with positive and negative opinion orientations. The opinion of each agent is represented by an integer number $k$ that expresses its level of agreement…
Given the incessant growth of documents describing the opinions of different people circulating on the web, including Web 2.0 has made it possible to give an opinion on any product in the net. In this paper, we examine the various opinions…
In this paper, we will review some of the issues that have been raised by opinion dynamics theory to date. In particular, we conducted a hypothesis-based simulation using a socio-physical approach regarding the filter bubble phenomenon that…
We study a model of a population making a binary decision based on information spreading within the population, which is fully connected or covering a square grid. We assume that a fraction of the population wants to make the choice of the…
Confirmation bias and peer pressure both have substantial impacts on the formation of collective decisions. Nevertheless, few attempts have been made to study how the interplay between these two mechanisms affects public opinion evolution.…
In a previous paper we proposed a model to study the dynamics of opinion formation in human societies by a co-evolution process involving two distinct time scales of fast transaction and slower network evolution dynamics. In the transaction…
Sample size criteria are often expressed in terms of the concentration of the posterior density, as controlled by some sort of error bound. Since this is done pre-experimentally, one can regard the posterior density as a function of the…
We analyze Assessment Voting, a new two-round voting procedure that can be applied to binary decisions in democratic societies. In the first round, a randomly-selected number of citizens cast their vote on one of the two alternatives at…
We describe a Bayesian model for social learning of a random variable in which agents might observe each other over a directed network. The outcomes produced are compared to those from a model in which observations occur randomly over a…
Researchers in psychology characterize decision-making as a process of eliminating options. While statistical modelling typically focuses on the eventual choice, we analyze consideration sets describing, for each survey participant, all…
The dissemination of information and the development of public opinion are essential elements of most social media platforms and are often described as distinct, man-made occurrences. However, what is often disregarded is the…
The dynamics of spreading of the minority opinion in public debates (a reform proposal, a behavior change, a military retaliation) is studied using a diffusion reaction model. People move by discrete step on a landscape of random geometry…
Prediction polling is an increasingly popular form of crowdsourcing in which multiple participants estimate the probability or magnitude of some future event. These estimates are then aggregated into a single forecast. Historically,…