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Published on: September 28, 2018
Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities.
J Xie1, S Sreenivasan, G Korniss
1Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, New York 12180, USA.
Summary
A small group of committed individuals can rapidly reverse majority opinion. Beyond a critical 10% threshold, opinion reversal time drastically decreases, especially in large populations.
Area of Science:
- Social dynamics
- Network theory
- Opinion formation
Background:
- Understanding how opinions spread and change in populations is crucial.
- Previous models often assume agents are susceptible to influence.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of committed, non-convertible agents on opinion dynamics.
- To identify critical thresholds for rapid population-wide opinion reversal.
Main Methods:
- Agent-based modeling simulating opinion propagation.
- Mathematical analysis of opinion dynamics on different network structures (complete, Erdős-Rényi, scale-free).
Main Results:
- A critical fraction of approximately 10% committed agents dramatically accelerates opinion reversal.
- For complete graphs, reversal time shifts from exponential (p < pc) to logarithmic (p > pc) with population size N.
- Similar qualitative behavior observed in random and scale-free networks.
Conclusions:
- Even a small, dedicated minority can destabilize and reverse majority opinion.
- The network structure significantly influences the speed of opinion change.
- Identified a critical threshold for efficient opinion reversal in large populations.
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