Frontiers in Robotics and AI (Jun 2018)

Opinion Dynamics With Mobile Agents: Contrarian Effects by Spatial Correlations

  • Heiko Hamann

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2018.00063
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5

Abstract

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We investigate the dynamics of opinion formation in a group of mobile agents with noisy perceptions. Two models are applied, the 2-state Galam opinion dynamics model with contrarians and an urn model of collective decision-making. It is shown that models built on the well-mixed assumption fail to represent the dynamics of a simple scenario. The challenge of accounting for correlations in the agents' spatial distribution is overcome by different heuristics and supported by empirical investigations. We present a concise, simple 1-dimensional macroscopic modeling approach that can be tuned to correctly model spatial correlations.

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