On the side-effects of compromising: coupling agents' heterogeneity with network effects on a bounded confidence opinion dynamics model

TL;DR

This paper investigates how heterogeneity among social agents and their network structures influence opinion dynamics, revealing complex phase behaviors including consensus shifts and the limitations of traditional order parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of heterogeneous agents and network effects in bounded confidence models, highlighting phenomena like coexistence of opinions and phase overturns.

Findings

Societies can reach consensus on an extreme opinion due to agent heterogeneity.

Opinion dynamics can involve overturning consensus without extremists or stubborn agents.

Standard order parameters may overlook coexistence phases in opinion dynamics.

Abstract

We present an extensive study of the joint effects of heterogeneous social agents and their heterogeneous social links in a bounded confidence opinion dynamics model. The full phase diagram of the model is explored for two different network's topologies and compared to two opposed extreme cases: on one hand heterogeneous agents which constitute a mixed population and on the other, their interactions are modeled by a lattice. The results show that when agents prone to compromising coexist with close minded ones, the steady state of the dynamics shows coexistent phases. In particular, unlike the homogeneous case in networks, or the heterogeneous case in fully mixed population, it is possible that the society ends up in consensus around one extreme opinion. Moreover, during the dynamics, the consensus may be overturned from one extreme to the other of the opinion space. We also show that the standard order parameter, the normalized average size of the largest opinion cluster, may be misleading in this case, as it hides the existence of these phases. The phase where the opinion of the society is overturned does not require the presence of agents with special characteristics, (stubborn, extremists, etc.); it results from the interplay of agents which have agreed on an extreme opinion with the remaining group that holds the opposite one. Among the former, some may be prone to compromising with other agents which are out of the majority group, these agents, according to their location in the network, may act like bridges between the two groups and slowly attract the whole society to the other extreme.