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How bad is forming your own opinion?

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  • Bindel, David
  • Kleinberg, Jon
  • Oren, Sigal

Abstract

The question of how people form their opinion has fascinated economists and sociologists for long time. In many of the models, a group of people in a social network, each holding a numerical opinion, arrive at a shared opinion through repeated averaging with their neighbors in the network. Motivated by the observation that in reality consensus is rarely reached, we study a related sociological model in which individuals' intrinsic beliefs counterbalance the averaging process and yield a diversity of opinions.

Suggested Citation

  • Bindel, David & Kleinberg, Jon & Oren, Sigal, 2015. "How bad is forming your own opinion?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 248-265.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:92:y:2015:i:c:p:248-265
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2014.06.004
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Acemoglu, Daron & Ozdaglar, Asuman & ParandehGheibi, Ali, 2010. "Spread of (mis)information in social networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 194-227, November.
    2. Alford, John R. & Funk, Carolyn L. & Hibbing, John R., 2005. "Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(2), pages 153-167, May.
    3. Peter M. DeMarzo & Dimitri Vayanos & Jeffrey Zwiebel, 2003. "Persuasion Bias, Social Influence, and Unidimensional Opinions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 909-968.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Loretta Mastroeni & Maurizio Naldi & Pierluigi Vellucci, 2019. "Personal Finance Decisions with Untruthful Advisors: an Agent-Based Model," Papers 1909.06759, arXiv.org.
    2. Catherine A. Glass & David H. Glass, 2021. "Social Influence of Competing Groups and Leaders in Opinion Dynamics," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 58(3), pages 799-823, October.
    3. Vaidya, Tushar & Chotibut, Thiparat & Piliouras, Georgios, 2021. "Broken detailed balance and non-equilibrium dynamics in noisy social learning models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 570(C).
    4. Sebastiano Della Lena, 2019. "Non-Bayesian Social Learning and the Spread of Misinformation in Networks," Working Papers 2019:09, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    5. Anufriev, Mikhail & Borissov, Kirill & Pakhnin, Mikhail, 2023. "Dissonance minimization and conversation in social networks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 167-191.
    6. Muhammad Umar B. Niazi & A. Bülent Özgüler, 2021. "A Differential Game Model of Opinion Dynamics: Accord and Discord as Nash Equilibria," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 137-160, March.
    7. Shang, Cui & Zhang, Runtong & Zhu, Xiaomin, 2023. "The influence of social embedding on belief system and its application in online public opinion guidance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 623(C).
    8. Kareeva, Yulia & Sedakov, Artem & Zhen, Mengke, 2023. "Influence in social networks with stubborn agents: From competition to bargaining," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 444(C).
    9. Tushar Vaidya & Thiparat Chotibut & Georgios Piliouras, 2019. "Broken Detailed Balance and Non-Equilibrium Dynamics in Noisy Social Learning Models," Papers 1906.11481, arXiv.org, revised May 2020.
    10. Griffin, Christopher & Squicciarini, Anna & Jia, Feiran, 2022. "Consensus in complex networks with noisy agents and peer pressure," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 608(P1).
    11. Changxiang He & Jiayuan Zeng & Guang Zhang & Shuting Liu, 2022. "Generalized opinion dynamics model for social trust networks," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 44(5), pages 3641-3662, December.
    12. Loretta Mastroeni & Maurizio Naldi & Pierluigi Vellucci, 2023. "Personal Finance Decisions with Untruthful Advisors: An Agent-Based Model," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(4), pages 1477-1522, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Opinion formation; Price of anarchy;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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