Impact of memory on opinion dynamics

Abstract

We investigate an agent-based model of opinion dynamics with two types of social response: conformity and independence. Conformity is introduced to the model analogously as in the Sznajd model or q-voter model, which means that only unanimous group exerts peer pressure on individuals. The novelty, in relation to previous versions of the q-voter model, is memory possessed by each agent and external noise T , which plays the role of social temperature. Each agent has its own memories of past experiences related to the social costs and benefits of being independent or conformist. If an agent was awarded in past more for being independent, it will have a greater tendency to be independent than conformist and vice versa. We will show that depending on the social temperature T the system spontaneously organizes into one of two regimes. Below a certain critical social temperature T c , all agents in the society acquire personal traits (so called person state). Some of them become permanent conformists and others start to behave forever independently. This means that initially homogeneous population becomes heterogeneous, and agents respond differently to social influence. For T > T c , all agents with equal probabilities behave independently or conform to peer pressure (so called situation state). This regime change between person and situation state, which reminds the idea of an annealed vs. quenched disorder, affects also public opinion. Particularly interesting results are obtained for individualistic societies, in which public opinion is non-monotonic function of T , which means that there is an optimal social temperature for which an agreement in the society is the highest.

Statistical Physics Of Opinion Formation: Is it a SPOOF?

“…If personality matters, we would probably like to study systems with heterogeneous agents. This heterogeneity can be achieved in several ways, for instance, by mixing agents with different attributes [45][46][47][48], rules of behaviors [16,19,[49][50][51], or memories [52]. Moreover, these two competitive ideologies recall two different approaches used to model disorders in physical systems.…”

Reduction from non-Markovian to Markovian dynamics: the case of aging in the noisy-voter model

“…The solutions to this equation provide the possible steady-state values of x st = n /N and those values of x st determine the other quantities, through Eqs. (17,18). It is clear that x st = 1/2 is always a trivial solution that corresponds to a symmetric steady state, with the same mean number of nodes with a given age having opposite states…”

“…where a i ≡ α i (1/2), a i ≡ d dx α i (x) x=1/2 and we have simplified notation by removing the superscript +, such that g (17,18) at the symmetric fixed point x = 1/2, this is:…”

Can Interactive Dual Fields of Information Explain the Prevalent Phenomena

“…As such information from the media reaches the people with different characteristics from each other, different awareness is induced in each people with every matters of news. This corresponds to the microscopic awareness or the microscopic opinion so that its averaging behavior in a whole society becomes the macroscopic awareness of the society [5][6][7]. On the other hand, when we macroscopically treat the social group without considering each people by assuming the average quantities of the group just as the collective characteristics of the group [8,9], we directly obtain the macroscopic awareness and public opinion of that social group.…”