Related papers: Pessimism Traps and Algorithmic Interventions
A long line of work in social psychology has studied variations in people's susceptibility to persuasion -- the extent to which they are willing to modify their opinions on a topic. This body of literature suggests an interesting…
Recent work has discussed the limitations of counterfactual explanations to recommend actions for algorithmic recourse, and argued for the need of taking causal relationships between features into consideration. Unfortunately, in practice,…
Social tipping, where minorities trigger larger populations to engage in collective action, has been suggested as one key aspect in addressing contemporary global challenges. Here, we refine Granovetter's widely acknowledged theoretical…
We construct a model of strategic imitation in an arbitrary network of players who interact through an additive game. Assuming a discrete time update, we show a condition under which the resulting difference equations converge to consensus.…
An agent acquires information dynamically until her belief about a binary state reaches an upper or lower threshold. She can choose any signal process subject to a constraint on the rate of entropy reduction. Strategies are ordered by "time…
We investigate a multi-agent model of firms in an R\&D network. Each firm is characterized by its knowledge stock $x_{i}(t)$, which follows a non-linear dynamics. It can grow with the input from other firms, i.e., by knowledge transfer, and…
To make decisions we are guided by the evidence we collect, as well as the opinions of friends and neighbors. How do we integrate our private beliefs with information we obtain from our social network? To understand the strategies humans…
More than half of the world's population now lives in urban environments, which concentrate services and infrastructure to satisfy the material needs of a growing number of inhabitants. The interdependencies between physical infrastructure…
Many physical, biological, and social phenomena can be described by cascades taking place on a network. Often, the activity can be empirically observed, but not the underlying network of interactions. In this paper we offer three…
Optimization is ubiquitous in quantum information science and technology, however, the corresponding optimization landscape can encounter false traps, i.e., local but not global optima, likely to prevent used optimizers from finding optimal…
We study the propagation of information in social networks. To do so, we focus on a cascade model where nodes are infected with {probability $p_1$ after their first contact with the information and with probability $p_2$ at all subsequent…
We study a sequential social learning model in which there is uncertainty about the informativeness of a common signal-generating process. Rational agents arrive in order and make decisions based on the past actions of others and their…
Pluralistic ignorance is a social-psychological phenomenon that occurs when individuals privately hold beliefs that differ from perceived group norms. Traditional models, based on opinion dynamics with private and public states, fail to…
Individual and social biases undermine the effectiveness of human advisers by inducing judgment errors which can disadvantage protected groups. In this paper, we study the influence these biases can have in the pervasive problem of fake…
Online social networks are increasingly being utilized for collective sense making and information processing in disasters. However, the underlying mechanisms that shape the dynamics of collective intelligence in online social networks…
Discovering the antecedents of individuals' influence in collaborative environments is an important, practical, and challenging problem. In this paper, we study interpersonal influence in small groups of individuals who collectively execute…
The major problem in information theoretic analysis of neural responses and other biological data is the reliable estimation of entropy--like quantities from small samples. We apply a recently introduced Bayesian entropy estimator to…
Tipping points occur in diverse systems in various disciplines such as ecology, climate science, economy or engineering. Tipping points are critical thresholds in system parameters or state variables at which a tiny perturbation can lead to…
Predicting panic is of critical importance in many areas of human and animal behavior, notably in the context of economics. The recent financial crisis is a case in point. Panic may be due to a specific external threat, or self-generated…
Information systems experience an ever-growing volume of unstructured data, particularly in the form of textual materials. This represents a rich source of information from which one can create value for people, organizations and…