Opinion dynamics and wisdom under conformity

Abstract

JEL classification: C72 D83 D85 Z13 Keywords: Opinion leadership Wisdom of crowds Consensus Social networks Conformity Eigenvector centrality a b s t r a c tWe study a dynamic model of opinion formation in social networks. In our model, boundedly rational agents update opinions by averaging over their neighbors' expressed opinions, but may misrepresent their own opinion by conforming or counter-conforming with their neighbors. We show that an agent's social influence on the long-run group opinion is increasing in network centrality and decreasing in conformity. Concerning efficiency of information aggregation or "wisdom" of the society, it turns out that misrepresentation of opinions need not undermine wisdom, but may even enhance it. Given the network, we provide the optimal distribution of conformity levels in the society and show which agents should be more conforming in order to increase wisdom.

Opinion dynamics and wisdom under out-group discrimination

“…Finally, considering the question of wisdom (Golub and Jackson, 2010; Jadbabaie et al, 2012; Buechel, Hellmann, and Klößner, 2015), that is, whether agents can (jointly) learn the true state of nature of their discussion topic, provided that such a truth exists, we observe the following. The case for wisdom is a weak one in our model since negative ties typically prevent consensus formation, so clearly not everybody can be wise in the long-run.…”

“…When weights are non-uniform and/or agents follow some of their peers while deviating from others, then the current setup may yield interesting generalizations of the basic conformist/non-conformist model. 12 11 For short, we will usually write (W ⊙ F)b instead of (W ⊙ F)(b). 12 It is also worthy to note that binary opinion spaces (in a conformist/anti-conformist setup) are closely related to games on networks (cf.…”

Conformity and Influence

“…The issues of conformity and influence arise in the social learning model of DeGroot (1974) and in the word-of-mouth communication of Ellison and Fudenberg (1995). The importance of network structure and individual behavior are further developed in such works as Golub and Jackson (2010), Acemoglu and Ozdaglar (2011), Acemoglu et al (2013), Corazzini et al (2012), Battiston and Stanca (2015), and Buechel et al (2015), where conformity and influence are the consequence of the social learning environment. Arifovic et al (2015) considers conformity as a motivator shaping beliefs and network formation in the context of social learning.…”

Opinion dynamics game in a social network with two influence nodes

“…Some recent results based on the DeGroot and Friedkin-Johnsen models can be found in [4,5]. Many works have extended the models of opinion dynamics with applications in social and political sciences, economics, engineering and computer sciences [6][7][8]. In [9], the authors develop a bounded confidence framework for a Friedkin-Johnsen model presenting a series of simulations.…”