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arXiv · 2007.00432

Collective effects of the cost of opinion change

Hendrik Schawe·Laura Hernández
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Abstract

We study the dynamics of opinion formation in the situation where changing opinion involves a cost for the agents. To do so we couple the dynamics of a heterogeneous bounded confidence Hegselmann-Krause model with that of the resources that the agents invest on each opinion change. The outcomes of the dynamics are non-trivial and strongly depend on the different regions of the confidence parameter space. In particular, a second order phase transition, for which we determine the corresponding critical exponents, is found in the region where a re-entrant consensus phase is observed in the heterogeneous Hegselmann-Krause model. For regions where consensus always exist in the heterogeneous Hegselmann-Krause model, the introduction of cost does not lead to a phase transition but just to a continuous decrease of the size of the largest opinion cluster. Finally in the region where fragmentation is expected in the heterogeneous HK model, the introduction of a very small cost paradoxically increases the size of the largest opinion cluster.

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Hendrik Schawe, Laura Hernández. 2020-07-01. Collective effects of the cost of opinion change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70809-1

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