Opinion dynamics with memory: how a society is shaped by its own past

TL;DR

This paper introduces a society opinion model with memory, demonstrating how collective history influences future opinions and showing similarities to Hopfield networks for information retrieval.

Contribution

It presents a novel opinion dynamics model incorporating memory effects and analytical insights into how societal history shapes collective responses.

Findings

Society's structure and reactions are influenced by its own history.

The model exhibits emergent behavior similar to Hopfield networks.

Analytical explanation of memory effects in opinion dynamics.

Abstract

In order to understand the development of common orientation of opinions in the modern world we propose a model of a society described as a large collection of agents that exchange their expressed opinions under the influence of their mutual interactions and external events. In particular we introduce an interaction bias which creates a collective memory effect such that the society is able to store and recall information coming from several external signals. Our model shows how the inner structure of the society and its future reactions can be shaped by its own history. We will provide an analytical explanation of how this might occur and we will show the emergent similarity between the reaction of a society modelled in this way and the Hopfield mechanism for information retrieval.