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Digital Library

of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation

 

Title:

Hierarchical Consensus Formation Reduces The Influence Of Opinion Bias

Authors:

Nicolas Perony, René Pfitzner, Ingo Scholtes, Claudio J. Tessone,

Frank Schweitzer

Published in:

 

(2012).ECMS 2012 Proceedings edited by: K. G. Troitzsch, M. Moehring, U. Lotzmann. European Council for Modeling and Simulation. doi:10.7148/2012 

 

ISBN: 978-0-9564944-4-3

 

26th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation,

Shaping reality through simulation

Koblenz, Germany, May 29 – June 1 2012

 

Citation format:

Perony, N., Pfitzner, R., Scholtes, I., Tessone, C. J., & Schweitzer, F. (2012). Hierarchical Consensus Formation Reduces The Influence Of Opinion Bias. ECMS 2012 Proceedings edited by: K. G. Troitzsch, M. Moehring, U. Lotzmann (pp. 662-668). European Council for Modeling and Simulation. doi:10.7148/2012-0662-0668

DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.7148/2012-0662-0668

Abstract:

We study the role of hierarchical structures in a sim- ple model of collective consensus formation based on the bounded confidence model with continuous individ- ual opinions. For the particular variation of this model considered in this paper, we assume that a bias towards an extreme opinion is introduced whenever two individ- uals interact and form a common decision. As a simple proxy for hierarchical social structures, we introduce a two-step decision making process in which in the sec- ond step groups of like-minded individuals are replaced by representatives once they have reached local consen- sus, and the representatives in turn form a collective de- cision in a downstream process. We find that the intro- duction of such a hierarchical decision making structure can improve consensus formation, in the sense that the eventual collective opinion is closer to the true average of individual opinions than without it. In particular, we numerically study how the size of groups of like-minded individuals being represented by delegate individuals af- fects the impact of the bias on the final population-wide consensus. These results are of interest for the design of organisational policies and the optimisation of hierarchi- cal structures in the context of group decision making.

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