Stochastic Opinion Dynamics Under Social Pressure in Arbitrary Networks

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tang, Jennifer; Adler, Aviv; Ajorlou, Amir; Jadbabaie, Ali
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Analog Devices, Inc.
• 刊物名称: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0018-9286
• DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2025.3578429
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 6937-6944
• 关键词: STOCHASTIC PROCESSES; vectors; Symmetric matrices; mathematical models; HISTORY; training; Sufficient conditions; Eigenvalues and eigenfunctions; Data mining; CONVERGENCE; Lyapunov methods; multiagent systems; opinion dynamics; stochastic approximation

摘要

Social pressure is a key factor affecting the evolution of opinions on networks in many types of settings, pushing people to conform to their neighbors' opinions. To study this, the interacting P & oacute;lya urn model was introduced by Jadbabaie et al., 2023, in which each agent has two kinds of opinion: inherent beliefs, which are hidden from the other agents and fixed; and declared opinions, which are randomly sampled at each step from a distribution which depends on the agent's inherent belief and her neighbors' past declared opinions (the social pressure component), and which is then communicated to her neighbors. Each agent also has a bias parameter denoting her level of resistance to social pressure. At every step, each agent updates her declared opinion (simultaneously with all other agents) according to her neighbors' aggregate past declared opinions, her inherent belief, and her bias parameter. We study the asymptotic behavior of this opinion dynamics model and show that the agents' declaration probabilities approach a set of equilibrium points of the expected dynamics using Lyapunov theory and stochastic approximation techniques. We also derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the agents to approach consensus on their declared opinions. Our work provides further insight into the difficulty of inferring the inherent beliefs of agents when they are under social pressure.