Communication and trust in the bounded confidence model

TL;DR

This paper examines how communication strategies and community structures evolve in emergency situations, highlighting that weak interpersonal communication fosters meaningful community formation, based on a theoretical analysis of social dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a model analyzing communication strategies during emergencies, revealing that community stability depends on the strength of interpersonal communication.

Findings

Pure selfish strategies are not evolutionarily stable.

Community structure is meaningful only with weak interpersonal communication.

Weak communication promotes stable community formation.

Abstract

The communication process in a situation of emergency is discussed within the Scheff theory of shame and pride. The communication involves messages from media and from other persons. Three strategies are considered: selfish (to contact friends), collective (to join other people) and passive (to do nothing). We show that the pure selfish strategy cannot be evolutionarily stable. The main result is that the community structure is statistically meaningful only if the interpersonal communication is weak.