Social influence and consensus building: Introducing a q-voter model with weighted influence.
We present a model of opinion formation where an individual's opinion is influenced by interactions with a group of agents. The model introduces a novel bias mechanism that favors one opinion, a feature not previously explored. In the absence of bias, the system reduces to a mean field voter mo...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2025-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316889 |
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| _version_ | 1849314447682699264 |
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| author | Pratik Mullick Parongama Sen |
| author_facet | Pratik Mullick Parongama Sen |
| author_sort | Pratik Mullick |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | We present a model of opinion formation where an individual's opinion is influenced by interactions with a group of agents. The model introduces a novel bias mechanism that favors one opinion, a feature not previously explored. In the absence of bias, the system reduces to a mean field voter model. We identify three regimes: favoring negative opinions, favoring positive opinions, and a neutral case. In large systems, equilibrium outcomes become independent of group size, with only the bias influencing the final consensus. For smaller groups, however, the time to reach equilibrium depends on group size. Our results show that even a small initial bias leads to a consensus, with all agents eventually sharing the same opinion if the bias is not zero. The system also exhibits critical slowing down near the neutral bias, which acts as a dynamical threshold. The time to reach consensus scales logarithmically for non-neutral biases and linearly with system size for the neutral case. While short-term dynamics are influenced by group size, long-term behavior is determined solely by the bias. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-ab7c879208114a9fabd55cd0e714f881 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj-art-ab7c879208114a9fabd55cd0e714f8812025-08-20T03:52:28ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032025-01-01201e031688910.1371/journal.pone.0316889Social influence and consensus building: Introducing a q-voter model with weighted influence.Pratik MullickParongama SenWe present a model of opinion formation where an individual's opinion is influenced by interactions with a group of agents. The model introduces a novel bias mechanism that favors one opinion, a feature not previously explored. In the absence of bias, the system reduces to a mean field voter model. We identify three regimes: favoring negative opinions, favoring positive opinions, and a neutral case. In large systems, equilibrium outcomes become independent of group size, with only the bias influencing the final consensus. For smaller groups, however, the time to reach equilibrium depends on group size. Our results show that even a small initial bias leads to a consensus, with all agents eventually sharing the same opinion if the bias is not zero. The system also exhibits critical slowing down near the neutral bias, which acts as a dynamical threshold. The time to reach consensus scales logarithmically for non-neutral biases and linearly with system size for the neutral case. While short-term dynamics are influenced by group size, long-term behavior is determined solely by the bias.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316889 |
| spellingShingle | Pratik Mullick Parongama Sen Social influence and consensus building: Introducing a q-voter model with weighted influence. PLoS ONE |
| title | Social influence and consensus building: Introducing a q-voter model with weighted influence. |
| title_full | Social influence and consensus building: Introducing a q-voter model with weighted influence. |
| title_fullStr | Social influence and consensus building: Introducing a q-voter model with weighted influence. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Social influence and consensus building: Introducing a q-voter model with weighted influence. |
| title_short | Social influence and consensus building: Introducing a q-voter model with weighted influence. |
| title_sort | social influence and consensus building introducing a q voter model with weighted influence |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316889 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT pratikmullick socialinfluenceandconsensusbuildingintroducingaqvotermodelwithweightedinfluence AT parongamasen socialinfluenceandconsensusbuildingintroducingaqvotermodelwithweightedinfluence |