André C. R. Martins

Continuous Opinions And Discrete Actions In Opinion Dynamics Problems

A model where agents show discrete behavior regarding their actions, but have continuous opinions that are updated by interacting with other agents is presented. This new updating rule is applied to both the voter and Sznajd models for interaction between neighbors, and its consequences are discussed. The appearance of extremists is naturally observed and it seems to be a characteristic of this model.

Mobility and social network effects on extremist opinions

Understanding the emergence of extreme opinions and in what kind of environment they might become less extreme is a central theme in our modern globalized society. A model combining continuous opinions and observed discrete actions (CODA) capable of addressing the important issue of measuring how extreme opinions might be has been recently proposed. In this paper I show extreme opinions to arise in a ubiquitous manner in the CODA model for a multitude of social network structures. Depending on network details reducing extremism seems to be possible. However, a large number of agents with extreme opinions is always observed. A significant decrease in the number of extremists can be observed by allowing agents to change their positions in the network.

An opinion dynamics model for the diffusion of innovations

We study the dynamics of the adoption of new products by agents with continuous opinions and discrete actions (CODA). The model is such that the refusal in adopting a new idea or product is increasingly weighted by neighbor agents as evidence against the product. Under these rules, we study the distribution of adoption times and the final proportion of adopters in the population. We compare the cases where initial adopters are clustered to the case where they are randomly scattered around the social network and investigate small world effects on the final proportion of adopters. The model predicts a fat tailed distribution for late adopters which is verified by empirical data.

Building up of individual inflexibility in opinion dynamics.

Two models of opinion dynamics are entangled in order to build a more realistic model of inflexibility. The first one is the Galam unifying frame (GUF), which incorporates rational and inflexible agents, and the other one is the Continuous Opinions and Discrete Actions model. While initially in GUF, inflexibility is a fixed given feature of an agent, it is now the result of an accumulation for a given agent who makes the same choice through repeated updates. Inflexibility thus emerges as an internal property of agents becoming a continuous function of the strength of its opinion. Therefore, an agent can be more or less inflexible and can shift from inflexibility along one choice to inflexibility along the opposite choice. These individual dynamics of the building up and falling off of agent inflexibility are driven by the successive local updates of the associated individual opinions. New results are obtained and discussed in terms of predicting outcomes of public debates.

Bayesian updating rules in continuous opinion dynamics models

Here, I investigate the use of Bayesian updating rules applied to modeling how social agents change their minds in the case of continuous opinion models. Given another agent statement about the continuous value of a variable, we will see that interesting dynamics emerge when an agent assigns a likelihood to that value that is a mixture of a Gaussian and a uniform distribution. This represents the idea that the other agent might have no idea about what is being talked about. The effect of updating only the first moments of the distribution will be studied, and we will see that this generates results similar to those of the bounded confidence models. On also updating the second moment, several different opinions always survive in the long run, as agents become more stubborn with time. However, depending on the probability of error and initial uncertainty, those opinions might be clustered around a central value.

Opinion dynamics of learning agents: does seeking consensus lead to disagreement?

We study opinion dynamics in a population of interacting adaptive agents voting on a set of issues represented by vectors. We consider agents who can classify issues into one of two categories and can arrive at their opinions using an adaptive algorithm. Adaptation comes from learning and the information for the learning process comes from interacting with other neighboring agents and trying to change the internal state in order to concur with their opinions. The change in the internal state is driven by the information contained in the issue and in the opinion of the other agent. We present results in a simple yet rich context where each agent uses a Boolean perceptron to state their opinion. If the update occurs with information asynchronously exchanged among pairs of agents, then the typical case, if the number of issues is kept small, is the evolution into a society torn by the emergence of factions with extreme opposite beliefs. This occurs even when seeking consensus with agents with opposite opinions. If the number of issues is large, the dynamics becomes trapped, the society does not evolve into factions and a distribution of moderate opinions is observed. The synchronous case is technically simpler and is studied by formulating the problem in terms of differential equations that describe the evolution of order parameters that measure the consensus between pairs of agents. We show that for a large number of issues and unidirectional information flow, global consensus is a fixed point; however, the approach to this consensus is glassy for large societies.

The Importance of Disagreeing Contrarians and Extremism in the CODA model

In this paper, we study the effects of introducing contrarians in a model of Opinion Dynamics where the agents have internal continuous opinions, but exchange information only about a binary choice that is a function of their continuous opinion, the CODA model. We observe that the hung election scenario that arises when contrarians are introduced in discrete opinion models still happens. However, it is weaker and it should not be expected in every election. Finally, we also show that the introduction of contrarians make the tendency towards extremism of the original model weaker, indicating that the existence of agents that prefer to disagree might be an important aspect and help society to diminish extremist opinions.

Trust in the CODA model: Opinion dynamics and the reliability of other agents

Abstract A model for the joint evolution of opinions and how much the agents trust each other is presented, using the framework of the Continuous Opinions and Discrete Actions (CODA) model. Instead of a fixed probability that the other agents will decide in the favor of the best choice, each agent considers that other agents might be one of two types: trustworthy or untrustworthy. Each agent its opinion and also the probability for each one of the other agents it interacts with being trustworthy. The dynamics of opinions and the evolution of the trust between the agents are studied. Clear evidences of the existence of two phases, one with strong polarization and the other tending to agreement, are observed. The transition shows signs of being a first-order transition. This happens despite the fact that the trust network evolves much slower than the opinion on the central issue.

Random, but not so much: A parameterization for the returns and correlation matrix of financial time series

A parameterization that is a modified version of a previous work is proposed for the returns and correlation matrix of financial time series and its properties are studied. This parameterization allows easy introduction of non-stationarity and it shows several of the characteristics of the true, observed realizations, such as fat tails, volatility clustering, and a spectrum of eigenvalues of the correlation matrix that can be understood as an extension of Random Matrix Theory results. The predicted behavior of this parameterization for the eigenvalues is compared with the eigenvalues of Brazilian assets and it is shown that those predictions fit the data better than Random Matrix Theory.

MODELING SCIENTIFIC AGENTS FOR A BETTER SCIENCE

Science is a fundamental human activity and we trust its results because it has several error-correcting mechanisms. Its is subject to experimental tests that are replicated by independent parts. Given the huge amount of information available, scientists have to rely on the reports of others. This makes it possible for social effects to influence the scientific community. Here, an Opinion Dynamics agent model is proposed to describe this situation. The influence of Nature through experiments is described as an external field that acts on the experimental agents. We will see that the retirement of old scientists can be fundamental in the acceptance of a new theory. We will also investigate the interplay between social influence and observations. This will allow us to gain insight in the problem of when social effects can have negligible effects in the conclusions of a scientific community and when we should worry about them.