Effects of Confidence Heterogeneities on Opinion Dynamics on the Adaptive Networks With Community Structure

Abstract

This paper investigates the opinion dynamics on the adaptive networks with the community structure. A coevolution model of opinions and networks is proposed, in which the influence weights among agents can not be precisely obtained, and there exist the confidence heterogeneities and the frequency difference of exchanging opinion between the inner-community and the inter-community. A two-dimensional fuzzy inference system is designed to obtain the influence weights among agents’ opinions, which deals with the difficulties that the influence weights can not be precisely obtained. The simulation results show that the imbalance levels between the inner-community confidence and the inter-community confidence not only affect strongly the average relative frequency of survival opinions, but also dominate the distribution of survival opinions. The polarization state of opinions easily appears in the population with the higher inner-community confidence, whereas when the inter-community confidence is higher, the system tends to exhibit a large number of small-size clusters and a plural state is achieved. Moreover, the simulation results also show that the convergence time to the stable state varies non-monotonically with the increase of the inner-community confidence or the inter-community confidence.

Keywords

• Opinion dynamics
• opinion cluster
• community structure
• consensus
• fuzzy inference system