Opinion evolution in time-varying social influence networks with prejudiced agents

Conference paper (2017)

Authors

A.V. Proskurnikov Russian Academy of Sciences, Team Tamas Keviczky - Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering , ITMO University
Roberto Tempo Politecnico di Torino
Ming Cao Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Noah E. Friedkin University of California
Research Group
Team Tamas Keviczky (Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2017 A.V. Proskurnikov, Roberto Tempo, Ming Cao, Noah E. Friedkin
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2017.08.1424
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Published Date

2017

Language

English

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Faculty

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

Department

Delft Center for Systems and Control

Research Group

Team Tamas Keviczky

Abstract

Investigation of social influence dynamics requires mathematical models that are “simple” enough to admit rigorous analysis, and yet sufficiently “rich” to capture salient features of social groups. Thus, the mechanism of iterative opinion pooling from (DeGroot, 1974), which can explain the generation of consensus, was elaborated in (Friedkin and Johnsen, 1999) to take into account individuals’ ongoing attachments to their initial opinions, or prejudices. The “anchorage” of individuals to their prejudices may disable reaching consensus and cause disagreement in a social influence network. Further elaboration of this model may be achieved by relaxing its restrictive assumption of a time-invariant influence network. During opinion dynamics on an issue, arcs of interpersonal influence may be added or subtracted from the network, and the influence weights assigned by an individual to his/her neighbors may alter. In this paper, we establish new important properties of the (Friedkin and Johnsen, 1999) opinion formation model, and also examine its extension to time-varying social influence networks.