Evolution of opinion dynamics with eccentric agents

Abstract

More recently, there has been a surge of studies that seek mechanisms of the opinion evolution. While many studies have been dedicated to this field, much less attention has been paid to the joint influence of diverse agents on the opinion evolution. In this paper, we proposed an opinion dynamic model based on the Deffuant Weisbuch(DW) model with the existence of eccentric agents. The eccentric agent will change its opinion if the eccentric agent is selected and the opinion difference between two selected agents is beyond the bounded confidence. Previous studies have demonstrated that consensus usually cannot be achieved in the DW model. However, our study suggests that the existence of a single eccentric agent is able to promote consensus in numerical simulations, regardless of any bounded confidence and initial opinion distribution. We further proved that the DW model with the single eccentric agent achieves quasi-consensus. The equilibrium of the system was also proposed. Lastly, we analyzed the final opinion distribution and convergence time with varying bounded confidence and convergence parameters.