Decision Making in Networks: A Model of Awareness Raising

Abstract

This work investigates how interpersonal interactions among individuals could affect the dynamics of awareness raising. Even though previous studies on mathematical models of awareness in the decision making context demonstrate how the level of awareness results from self-observation impinged by optimal decision selections and external uncertainties, an explicit accounting of interaction among individuals is missing. Here we introduce for the first time a theoretical mathematical framework to evaluate the effect on individual awareness exerted by the interaction with neighbor agents. This task is performed by embedding the single agent model into a graph and allowing different agents to interact by means of suitable coupling functions. The presence of the network allows, from a global point of view, the emergence of diffusion mechanisms for which the population tends to reach homogeneous attractors, and, among them, the one with the highest level of awareness. The structural and behavioral patterns, such as the initial levels of awareness and the relative importance the individual assigns to their own state with respect to others’, may drive real actors to stress effective actions increasing individual and global awareness.

Keywords

• awareness
• self-awareness
• mathematical model
• network
• decision making
• Markov decision process