IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jas/jasssj/2008-72-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Modelling Opinion Formation with Physics Tools: Call for Closer Link with Reality

Author

Listed:
  • Pawel Sobkowicz

Abstract

The growing field of studies of opinion formation using physical formalisms and computer simulation based tools suffers from relative lack of connection to the 'real world' societal behaviour. Such sociophysics research should aim at explaining observations or at proposing new ones. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, as many works concentrate more on the models themselves than on the social phenomena. Moreover, the simplifications proposed in simulations often sacrifice realism on the altar of computability. There are several ways to improve the value of the research, the most important by promoting truly multidisciplinary cooperation between physicists aiming to describe social phenomena and sociologists studying the phenomena in the field. In the specific case of modelling of opinion formation there are a few technical ideas which might bring the computer models much closer to reality, and therefore to improve the predictive value of the sociophysics approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Pawel Sobkowicz, 2009. "Modelling Opinion Formation with Physics Tools: Call for Closer Link with Reality," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 12(1), pages 1-11.
    • Handle: RePEc:jas:jasssj:2008-72-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jasss.org/12/1/11/11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua M. Epstein, 2008. "Why Model?," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 11(4), pages 1-12.
    2. C. J. Tessone & R. Toral, 2004. "Neighborhood models of minority opinion spreading," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 206, Society for Computational Economics.
    3. Filippo Caruso & Paolo Castorina, 2005. "Opinion Dynamics And Decision Of Vote In Bipolar Political Systems," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(09), pages 1473-1487.
    4. Dorogovtsev, S.N. & Mendes, J.F.F., 2003. "Evolution of Networks: From Biological Nets to the Internet and WWW," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198515906.
    5. F. Slanina & H. Lavicka, 2003. "Analytical results for the Sznajd model of opinion formation," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 35(2), pages 279-288, September.
    6. A. T. Bernardes & U. M. S. Costa & A. D. Araujo & D. Stauffer, 2001. "Damage Spreading, Coarsening Dynamics And Distribution Of Political Votes In Sznajd Model On Square Lattice," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 12(02), pages 159-167.
    7. Barabási, Albert-László & Ravasz, Erzsébet & Vicsek, Tamás, 2001. "Deterministic scale-free networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 299(3), pages 559-564.
    8. L. Conradt & T. J. Roper, 2003. "Group decision-making in animals," Nature, Nature, vol. 421(6919), pages 155-158, January.
    9. Alessandro Pluchino & Vito Latora & Andrea Rapisarda, 2005. "Changing Opinions In A Changing World: A New Perspective In Sociophysics," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(04), pages 515-531.
    10. Rainer Hegselmann & Ulrich Krause, 2002. "Opinion Dynamics and Bounded Confidence Models, Analysis and Simulation," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 5(3), pages 1-2.
    11. Guillaume Deffuant & Frederic Amblard & Gérard Weisbuch, 2002. "How Can Extremism Prevail? a Study Based on the Relative Agreement Interaction Model," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 5(4), pages 1-1.
    12. R. Chialvo, Dante, 2004. "Critical brain networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 340(4), pages 756-765.
    13. Dietrich Stauffer & Adriano Sousa & Christian Schulze, 2004. "Discretized Opinion Dynamics of the Deffaunt Model on Scale-Free Networks," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 7(3), pages 1-7.
    14. Galam, Serge, 1997. "Rational group decision making: A random field Ising model at T = 0," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 238(1), pages 66-80.
    15. Jan Lorenz, 2007. "Continuous Opinion Dynamics Under Bounded Confidence: A Survey," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 18(12), pages 1819-1838.
    16. Scott Moss & Bruce Edmonds, 2005. "Towards Good Social Science," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 8(4), pages 1-13.
    17. Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron & Józef Sznajd, 2000. "Opinion Evolution In Closed Community," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 11(06), pages 1157-1165.
    18. Steven H. Strogatz, 2001. "Exploring complex networks," Nature, Nature, vol. 410(6825), pages 268-276, March.
    19. Laxmidhar Behera & Frank Schweitzer, 2003. "On Spatial Consensus Formation: Is The Sznajd Model Different From A Voter Model?," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 14(10), pages 1331-1354.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Domino, Krzysztof & Miszczak, Jarosław Adam, 2022. "Will you infect me with your opinion?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 608(P1).
    2. Botte, Nina & Ryckebusch, Jan & Rocha, Luis E.C., 2022. "Clustering and stubbornness regulate the formation of echo chambers in personalised opinion dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 599(C).
    3. Shane T. Mueller & Yin-Yin Sarah Tan, 2018. "Cognitive perspectives on opinion dynamics: the role of knowledge in consensus formation, opinion divergence, and group polarization," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 15-48, January.
    4. Weimer, Christopher W. & Miller, J.O. & Hill, Raymond R. & Hodson, Douglas D., 2022. "An opinion dynamics model of meta-contrast with continuous social influence forces," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 589(C).
    5. Castro, Luis E. & Shaikh, Nazrul I., 2018. "A particle-learning-based approach to estimate the influence matrix of online social networks," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-18.
    6. Zanin, Massimiliano & Papo, David & Romance, Miguel & Criado, Regino & Moral, Santiago, 2016. "The topology of card transaction money flows," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 462(C), pages 134-140.
    7. Shyam Gouri Suresh & Scott Jeffrey, 2017. "The Consequences of Social Pressures on Partisan Opinion Dynamics," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 43(2), pages 242-259, March.
    8. Shyam Gouri Suresh & Scott Jeffrey, 2017. "The Consequences of Social Pressures on Partisan Opinion Dynamics," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 43(2), pages 242-259, March.
    9. Wolf, Ingo & Schröder, Tobias & Neumann, Jochen & de Haan, Gerhard, 2015. "Changing minds about electric cars: An empirically grounded agent-based modeling approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 269-285.
    10. Francisco J. León-Medina & Jordi Tena-Sánchez & Francisco J. Miguel, 2020. "Fakers becoming believers: how opinion dynamics are shaped by preference falsification, impression management and coherence heuristics," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 385-412, April.
    11. 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.
    12. Massimiliano Zanin & David Papo & Miguel Romance & Regino Criado & Santiago Moral, 2016. "The topology of card transaction money flows," Papers 1605.04938, arXiv.org.
    13. Tommaso Venturini & Pablo Jensen & Bruno Latour, 2015. "Fill in the Gap: A New Alliance for Social and Natural Sciences," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 18(2), pages 1-11.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. AskariSichani, Omid & Jalili, Mahdi, 2015. "Influence maximization of informed agents in social networks," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 254(C), pages 229-239.
    2. Jalili, Mahdi, 2013. "Social power and opinion formation in complex networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(4), pages 959-966.
    3. Song, Xiao & Shi, Wen & Tan, Gary & Ma, Yaofei, 2015. "Multi-level tolerance opinion dynamics in military command and control networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 437(C), pages 322-332.
    4. Yaofeng Zhang & Renbin Xiao, 2015. "Modeling and Simulation of Polarization in Internet Group Opinions Based on Cellular Automata," Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, Hindawi, vol. 2015, pages 1-15, August.
    5. Guzmán-Vargas, L. & Hernández-Pérez, R., 2006. "Small-world topology and memory effects on decision time in opinion dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 372(2), pages 326-332.
    6. Juliette Rouchier & Emily Tanimura, 2012. "When overconfident agents slow down collective learning," Post-Print hal-00623966, HAL.
    7. Huang, Changwei & Dai, Qionglin & Han, Wenchen & Feng, Yuee & Cheng, Hongyan & Li, Haihong, 2018. "Effects of heterogeneous convergence rate on consensus in opinion dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 499(C), pages 428-435.
    8. Fang Wu & Bernardo A. Huberman, 2004. "Social Structure and Opinion Formation," Computational Economics 0407002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Ding, Fei & Liu, Yun & Shen, Bo & Si, Xia-Meng, 2010. "An evolutionary game theory model of binary opinion formation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(8), pages 1745-1752.
    10. María Cecilia Gimenez & Luis Reinaudi & Ana Pamela Paz-García & Paulo Marcelo Centres & Antonio José Ramirez-Pastor, 2021. "Opinion evolution in the presence of constant propaganda: homogeneous and localized cases," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 94(1), pages 1-11, January.
    11. Song, Xiao & Zhang, Shaoyun & Qian, Lidong, 2013. "Opinion dynamics in networked command and control organizations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(20), pages 5206-5217.
    12. Galam, Serge, 2010. "Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data: The cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(17), pages 3619-3631.
    13. Kurmyshev, Evguenii & Juárez, Héctor A. & González-Silva, Ricardo A., 2011. "Dynamics of bounded confidence opinion in heterogeneous social networks: Concord against partial antagonism," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(16), pages 2945-2955.
    14. Shane T. Mueller & Yin-Yin Sarah Tan, 2018. "Cognitive perspectives on opinion dynamics: the role of knowledge in consensus formation, opinion divergence, and group polarization," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 15-48, January.
    15. Fan, Kangqi & Pedrycz, Witold, 2015. "Emergence and spread of extremist opinions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 436(C), pages 87-97.
    16. Galam, Serge, 2011. "Collective beliefs versus individual inflexibility: The unavoidable biases of a public debate," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(17), pages 3036-3054.
    17. Francisco J. León-Medina & Jordi Tena-Sánchez & Francisco J. Miguel, 2020. "Fakers becoming believers: how opinion dynamics are shaped by preference falsification, impression management and coherence heuristics," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 385-412, April.
    18. Sznajd-Weron, Katarzyna & Sznajd, Józef & Weron, Tomasz, 2021. "A review on the Sznajd model — 20 years after," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 565(C).
    19. Wang, Huanjing & Shang, Lihui, 2015. "Opinion dynamics in networks with common-neighbors-based connections," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 421(C), pages 180-186.
    20. Piotr Przybyła & Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron & Rafał Weron, 2014. "Diffusion Of Innovation Within An Agent-Based Model: Spinsons, Independence And Advertising," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(01), pages 1-22.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jas:jasssj:2008-72-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Francesco Renzini (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.