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Conformity to popular, not average, opinions: Models, data, and evolution.

Kaleda K Denton1, Marcus W Feldman2, Jonathan F Johannemann3

  • 1Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501.

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Individuals may conform to peer opinions rather than averaging them, influencing group consensus. This conformity model better explains decision-making data and can lead to faster polarization than averaging models.

Keywords:
French-DeGroot modelconformitynetworksopinion dynamicswisdom of the crowd

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Area of Science:

  • Social Psychology
  • Network Science
  • Computational Social Science

Background:

  • Traditional models assume individuals average peer estimates (e.g., French-DeGroot learning).
  • An alternative behavior is conformity, where individuals adopt existing opinion clusters.
  • This study explores how personal beliefs and social information interact in conformity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To extend a conformity model with personal beliefs and social information.
  • To compare the conformity model against French-DeGroot averaging models using human data.
  • To simulate evolutionary dynamics of these models across various network structures.

Main Methods:

  • Developed an extended conformity model incorporating personal beliefs and social influence.
  • Evaluated model performance against two French-DeGroot averaging models using human decision-making data.
  • Conducted evolutionary simulations on static and adaptive networks to analyze model dynamics.

Main Results:

  • The conformity model significantly outperformed French-DeGroot models in fitting human decision-making data.
  • Evolutionary simulations showed the conformity model can drive faster polarization toward extreme opinions.
  • Conformity dynamics can potentially reduce average estimation accuracy within populations.

Conclusions:

  • Conformity is a crucial mechanism in social learning, often outperforming simple averaging.
  • The conformity model offers new insights into consensus formation, opinion polarization, and collective intelligence.
  • Network structure significantly impacts the evolutionary trajectories of conformity and averaging behaviors.