Anonymous social influence

Journal article: We study a stochastic model of influence where agents have "yes" or "no" inclinations on some issue, and opinions may change due to mutual influence among the agents. Each agent independently aggregates the opinions of the other agents and possibly herself. We study influence processes modeled by ordered weighted averaging operators, which are anonymous: they only depend on how many agents share an opinion. For instance, this allows to study situations where the influence process is based on majorities, which are not covered by the classical approach of weighted averaging aggregation. We find a necessary and sufficient condition for convergence to consensus and characterize outcomes where the society ends up polarized. Our results can also be used to understand more general situations, where ordered weighted averages are only used to some extent. Furthermore, we apply our results to fuzzy linguistic quantifiers, i.e., expressions like "most" or "at least a few".

Author(s)

Manuel Foerster, Michel Grabisch, Agnieszka Rusinowska

Journal
  • Games and Economic Behavior
Date of publication
  • 2013
Keywords JEL
C65 C73 D72 D83 D85
Keywords
  • Influence
  • Anonymity
  • Ordered weighted averaging operator
  • Convergence
  • Consensus
  • Fuzzy linguistic quantifier
Pages
  • 621-635
Version
  • 1
Volume
  • 82