The Impact of Individual Biases on Consensus Formation

Autor segons l'article: Sales-Pardo, Marta; Diermeier, Daniel; Amaral, Luis A Nunes

Departament: Enginyeria Química

Autor/s de la URV: Sales Pardo, Marta

Paraules clau: Public opinion; Prejudice; Models, theoretical; Model; Mode; Humans; Dynamics; Consensus; Computer simulation

Resum: Social groups of interacting agents display an ability to coordinate in the absence of a central authority, a phenomenon that has been recently amplified by the widespread availability of social networking technologies. Models of opinion formation in a population of agents have proven a very useful tool to investigate these phenomena that arise independently of the heterogeneities across individuals and can be used to identify the factors that determine whether widespread consensus on an initial small majority is reached. Recently, we introduced a model in which individual agents can have conservative and partisan biases. Numerical simulations for finite populations showed that while the inclusion of conservative agents in a population enhances the population's efficiency in reaching consensus on the initial majority opinion, even a small fraction of partisans leads the population to converge on the opinion initially held by a minority. To further understand the mechanisms leading to our previous numerical results, we investigate analytically the noise driven transition from a regime in which the population reaches a majority consensus (efficient), to a regime in which the population settles in deadlock (non-efficient). We show that the mean-field solution captures what we observe in model simulations. Populations of agents with no opinion bias show a continuous transition to a deadlock regime, while populations with an opinion bias, show a discontinuous transition between efficient and partisan regimes. Furthermore, the analytical solution reveals that populations with an increasing fraction of conservative agents are more robust against noise than a population of naive agents because in the efficient regime there are relatively more conservative than naive agents holding the majority opinion. In contrast, populations with partisan agents are less robust to noise with an increasing fraction of partisans, because in the efficient regime there are relatively more naive agents than partisan agents holding the majority opinion.

Àrees temàtiques: Zootecnia / recursos pesqueiros; Sociology; Sociología; Serviço social; Saúde coletiva; Química; Psychology; Psicología; Planejamento urbano e regional / demografia; Odontología; Nutrição; Multidisciplinary sciences; Multidisciplinary; Medicine (miscellaneous); Medicina veterinaria; Medicina iii; Medicina ii; Medicina i; Materiais; Matemática / probabilidade e estatística; Linguística e literatura; Letras / linguística; Interdisciplinary research in the social sciences; Interdisciplinar; Human geography and urban studies; History & philosophy of science; Historia; Geografía; Geociências; General medicine; General biochemistry,genetics and molecular biology; General agricultural and biological sciences; Farmacia; Environmental studies; Ensino; Engenharias iv; Engenharias iii; Engenharias ii; Engenharias i; Enfermagem; Educação física; Educação; Economia; Direito; Demography; Comunicação e informação; Ciências sociais aplicadas i; Ciências biológicas iii; Ciências biológicas ii; Ciências biológicas i; Ciências ambientais; Ciências agrárias i; Ciência política e relações internacionais; Ciência de alimentos; Ciência da computação; Biotecnología; Biology; Biodiversidade; Biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (miscellaneous); Astronomia / física; Arquitetura, urbanismo e design; Archaeology; Antropologia / arqueologia; Anthropology; Agricultural and biological sciences (miscellaneous); Administração, ciências contábeis e turismo; Administração pública e de empresas, ciências contábeis e turismo

Accès a la llicència d'ús: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/

Adreça de correu electrònic de l'autor: marta.sales@urv.cat

Data d'alta del registre: 2024-10-19

Versió de l'article dipositat: info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Enllaç font original: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058989

Referència a l'article segons font original: Plos One. 8 (5): e58989-

Referència de l'ítem segons les normes APA: Sales-Pardo, Marta; Diermeier, Daniel; Amaral, Luis A Nunes (2013). The Impact of Individual Biases on Consensus Formation. Plos One, 8(5), e58989-. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058989

URL Document de llicència: https://repositori.urv.cat/ca/proteccio-de-dades/

DOI de l'article: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058989

Entitat: Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Any de publicació de la revista: 2013

Tipus de publicació: Journal Publications