Abstract
Two models are developed for updating opinions in social networks under situations where certain beliefs might be considered to be competing. These two models represent different attitudes of people towards the perceived conflict between beliefs. In both models agents have a degree of tolerance, which represents the extent to which the agent takes into account the differing beliefs of other agents, and a degree of conflict, which represents the extent to which two beliefs are considered to be competing. Computer simulations are used to determine how the opinion dynamics are affected by the inclusion of conflict. Results show that conflict can enhance the formation of consensus within the network in certain circumstances according to one of the models.
Highlights
There are many situations in social networks where each individual holds beliefs about two topics, e.g., two explanations of some phenomenon, which may be perceived to be competing
In order to address this kind of problem, we propose two models in this paper focusing on opinion dynamics in social networks with conflicting beliefs
This paper has investigated the two-dimensional opinion dynamics when there is perceived conflict between the two beliefs
Summary
There are many situations in social networks where each individual (agent) holds beliefs about two (or more) topics, e.g., two explanations of some phenomenon, which may be perceived to be competing. Opinion dynamics in a group of interacting agents has been studied for a long time from a wide range of aspects, e.g., sociology, physics, politics, economics and philosophy (French 1956; Harary 1959; Deffuant et al 2000; Krause 2000; Hegselmann and Krause 2002; Weisbuch et al 2002) In these models of opinion dynamics, a group of agents who hold beliefs about a given topic interact with each other to seek truth or reach consensus (Lorenz 2008). Riegler and Douven (2009) extended the belief states of the agents from single numerical beliefs to theories formulated in a particular language, built up from a number of atomic sentences and usual logical connectives These existing multidimensional opinion dynamics mainly consider independent topics without perceived conflict between them, e.g., sports and politics.
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