Opinion formation in kinetic exchange models: Spontaneous symmetry-breaking transition

Abstract

We propose a minimal multiagent model for the collective dynamics of opinion formation in the society by modifying kinetic exchange dynamics studied in the context of income, money, or wealth distributions in a society. This model has an intriguing spontaneous symmetry-breaking transition to polarized opinion state starting from nonpolarized opinion state. In order to analyze the model, we introduce an iterative map version of the model, which has very similar statistical characteristics. An approximate theoretical analysis of the numerical results is also given, based on the iterative map version.

Phase transitions in a two-parameter model of opinion dynamics with random kinetic exchanges

“…Making λ i = µ i , one gets back the model of [10]. The opinions of both the individuals are changed at the same time, and the interacting individuals are chosen randomly.In the simplest picture, we keep the two parameters λ and µ independent of the agents, i.e, assume a homogeneous population having identical λ and µ.The introduction of the parameter µ different from λ lends a different connotation to the original model studied in [10]. One can now interpret the first term containing λ as a self interaction term and the term containing µ representing the influence from others as an interaction term.…”

“…Making λ i = µ i , one gets back the model of [10]. The opinions of both the individuals are changed at the same time, and the interacting individuals are chosen randomly.…”

“…The evolution usually leads to a steady state characterised either by a homogeneous state where people have similar opinion or a heterogeneous behaviour where people have widely different opinions. The interactions of the individuals in opinion dynamics models can be studied in terms of appropriate tunable parameters and it is of interest to observe whether such parameters can drive a phase transition in the system [6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…The evolution usually leads to a steady state characterised either by a homogeneous state where people have similar opinion or a heterogeneous behaviour where people have widely different opinions. The interactions of the individuals in opinion dynamics models can be studied in terms of appropriate tunable parameters and it is of interest to observe whether such parameters can drive a phase transition in the system [6][7][8][9][10].While several different schemes have been proposed for possible evolution of opinions, a number of models have adopted the idea of kinetic exchanges in opinion formation [10][11][12][13][14]. In one such recently introduced model [10], the opinions of individuals, continuously varying from -1 to +1, were assumed to change after pairwise interactions.…”

Quantum Walk in Periodic Potential on a Line and a Model of Interacting Opinions

“…In the Deffuant model an agent interacts only with his/her nearest neighbours, whilst in the Hegselmann-Krause model an agent simultaneously interacts with all other agents whose opinions are within certain prescribed bound. More recently, a random kineticexchange type model of continuous opinions is proposed in [56]. Multi-dimensional, or vectorial extensions of the bounded confidence models have also been considered in [57,58].…”