Balance seeking opinion dynamics model based on social judgment theory

Abstract

In this paper, we make a bridge between two theories in social psychology, namely social judgment theory and balance theory, exploiting nonlinear models. In particular, we propose a model of opinion dynamics which takes into account the notions of latitude of acceptance, latitude of noncommitment, and latitude of rejection from social judgment theory. In the proposed model, each individual is considered as a node in a graph, and the influences are represented by edges. The proposed model considers positive (negative) edges for acceptance (rejection), while there is no connection for noncommitment. In addition, in the introduced nonlinear model, the weight of each edge, which represents the influence weight, changes depending on the opinions of the individuals in the network. Given the negative interactions, the influence graph of the network may be initially unbalanced; however, the proposed model presents that such graph seeks balance eventually. Thus, the model introduced in this paper provides a mathematical framework for balance theory introduced by Harary. Through simulations, we show that the proposed model can demonstrate consensus, bipartite consensus, and clustering of opinions. Show more