Anonymous social influence

Manuel Foerster, Michel Grabisch and Agnieszka Rusinowska

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Abstract: We study a stochastic model of influence where agents have "yes" or "no" inclinations on some issue, and opinions may change due to mutual influence among the agents. Each agent independently aggregates the opinions of the other agents and possibly herself. We study influence processes modeled by ordered weighted averaging operators, which are anonymous: they only depend on how many agents share an opinion. For instance, this allows to study situations where the influence process is based on majorities, which are not covered by the classical approach of weighted averaging aggregation. We find a necessary and sufficient condition for convergence to consensus and characterize outcomes where the society ends up polarized. Our results can also be used to understand more general situations, where ordered weighted averages are only used to some extent. Furthermore, we apply our results to fuzzy linguistic quantifiers, i.e., expressions like "most" or "at least a few".

Keywords: Influence; Anonymity; Ordered weighted averaging operator; Convergence; Consensus; Fuzzy linguistic quantifier (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gth, nep-mic and nep-net
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00913235v1
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Published in Games and Economic Behavior, 2013, 82, pp.621-635. ⟨10.1016/j.geb.2013.09.006⟩

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Related works:
Journal Article: Anonymous social influence (2013)
Working Paper: Anonymous Social Influence (2013)
Working Paper: Anonymous social influence (2013)
Working Paper: Anonymous social influence (2013)
Working Paper: Anonymous Social Influence (2013)
Working Paper: Anonymous social influence (2013)
Working Paper: Anonymous social influence (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00913235

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2013.09.006

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