Related papers: Better be third then second in a search for a majo…
Ising or Potts models of ferromagnetism have been widely used to describe locally interacting social or economic systems. We consider a related model, introduced by Sznajd to describe the evolution of consensus in a society. In this model,…
We consider two recent suggestions for how to perform an empirically motivated Monte Carlo study to help select a treatment effect estimator under unconfoundedness. We show theoretically that neither is likely to be informative except under…
We present numerical simulations of a model of social influence, where the opinion of each agent is represented by a binary vector. Agents adjust their opinions as a result of random encounters, whenever the difference between opinions is…
Despite the increasing diffusion of the Internet technology, TV remains the principal medium of communication. People's perceptions, knowledge, beliefs and opinions about matter of facts get (in)formed through the information reported on by…
We describe a general strategy for sampling configurations from a given distribution, NOT based on the standard Metropolis (Markov chain) strategy. It uses the fact that nontrivial problems in statistical physics are high dimensional and…
Aggregated data in real world recommender applications often feature fat-tailed distributions of the number of times individual items have been rated or favored. We propose a model to simulate such data. The model is mainly based on social…
A common economic process is crowdsearch, wherein a group of agents is invited to search for a valuable physical or virtual object, e.g. creating and patenting an invention, solving an open scientific problem, or identifying vulnerabilities…
Monte Carlo sampling of any system may be analyzed in terms of an associated glass model -- a variant of the Random Energy Model -- with, whenever there is a sign problem, complex fields. This model has three types of phases (liquid, frozen…
We introduce a consensus model inspired by the Sznajd Model. The updating is synchronous and memory plays here a decisive role in making possible the reaching of total consensus. We study the phase transition between the state with…
Opinion dynamics concerns social processes through which populations or groups of individuals agree or disagree on specific issues. As such, modelling opinion dynamics represents an important research area that has been progressively…
There are many on-line settings in which users publicly express opinions. A number of these offer mechanisms for other users to evaluate these opinions; a canonical example is Amazon.com, where reviews come with annotations like "26 of 32…
We consider a stochastic, continuous state and time opinion model where each agent's opinion locally interacts with other agents' opinions in the system, and there is also exogenous randomness. The interaction tends to create clusters of…
We propose an exactly solvable model for the dynamics of voters in a two-party system. The opinion formation process is modeled on a random network of agents. The dynamical nature of interpersonal relations is also reflected in the model,…
Current reporting of results based on Markov chain Monte Carlo computations could be improved. In particular, a measure of the accuracy of the resulting estimates is rarely reported. Thus we have little ability to objectively assess the…
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…
Engaging with dissenting views, fostering productive disagreements or strategic anticonformity can benefit organizations as it challenges the status quo. The question arises, however, whether such strategic anticonformity ultimately leads…
We consider an idealized model in which individuals' changing opinions and their social network coevolve, with disagreements between neighbors in the network resolved either through one imitating the opinion of the other or by reassignment…
A general model of opinion dynamics is introduced in which each individual's opinion is measured on a bounded continuous spectrum. Each opinion is influenced heterogeneously by every other opinion in the population. It is demonstrated that…
We study the outcomes of information aggregation in online social networks. Our main result is that networks with certain realistic structural properties avoid information cascades and enable a population to effectively aggregate…
Social influence is the process by which individuals adapt their opinion, revise their beliefs, or change their behavior as a result of social interactions with other people. In our strongly interconnected society, social influence plays a…