Sudden Trust Collapse in Networked Societies
Jo\~ao da Gama Batista, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Damien Challet

TL;DR
This paper models how trust in networks can suddenly collapse due to amplification effects, showing that trust dynamics can exhibit phase transitions with multiple stable states and spontaneous shifts.
Contribution
It introduces a stylized model demonstrating first order phase transitions in trust, including coexistence of high and low trust states and the possibility of spontaneous trust collapse.
Findings
Trust can undergo sudden, catastrophic collapse without external shocks.
Multiple equilibrium states exist, including high-trust and low-trust configurations.
Large systems show history dependence, with initial conditions determining trust state.
Abstract
Trust is a collective, self-fulfilling phenomenon that suggests analogies with phase transitions. We introduce a stylized model for the build-up and collapse of trust in networks, which generically displays a first order transition. The basic assumption of our model is that whereas trust begets trust, panic also begets panic, in the sense that a small decrease in trust may be amplified and ultimately lead to a sudden and catastrophic drop of trust. We show, using both numerical simulations and mean-field analytic arguments, that there are extended regions of the parameter space where two equilibrium states coexist: a well-connected network where confidence is high, and a poorly connected network where confidence is low. In these coexistence regions, spontaneous jumps from the well-connected state to the poorly connected state can occur, corresponding to a sudden collapse of trust that…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
