Think then act or act then think?

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new agent-based opinion dynamics model combining social psychology and physics concepts, revealing how update order affects internal harmony and macroscopic outcomes in social simulations.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel opinion model integrating public/private and pre/post influence levels, highlighting the impact of update order on social system dynamics.

Findings

Models produce identical macroscopic outcomes based on total positive opinions.

Internal harmony levels differ significantly depending on update sequence.

Results obtained through Monte Carlo simulations and analytical methods.

Abstract

We introduce a new agent-based model of opinion dynamics in which binary opinions (yes/no) of each agent can be measured and described regarding both pre- and post-influence at both of two levels, public and private, vis-\`a-vis the influence source. The model combines ideas introduced within the $q$-voter model with noise, proposed by physicists, with the descriptive, four-dimensional model of social response, formulated by social psychologists. We investigate two versions of the same model that differ only by the updating order: an opinion on the public level is updated before an opinion on the private level or vice versa. We show how the results on the macroscopic scale depend on this order. The main finding of this paper is that both models produce the same outcome if one looks only at such a macroscopic variable as the total number of the individuals with positive opinions. However, if also the level of internal harmony (viz., dissonance) is measured, then significant, qualitative differences are seen between these two versions of the model. All results were obtained simultaneously within Monte Carlo simulations and analytical calculations. We discuss the importance of our studies and findings from three points of view: the theory of phase transitions, agent-based modeling of social systems, and social psychology.