Conciliatory and contradictory dynamics in opinion formation

Laurent Boudin (1, 2) , Aurore Mercier (1) , Francesco Salvarani (3)

1 LJLL - Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions
2 REO - Numerical simulation of biological flows
3 Dipartimento di matematica F. Casorati

In this article, we study, via a kinetic description, the effect of different psychologies on the evolution of the opinion with respect to a binary choice, in a closed group. We show that the interaction between individuals with different reactions regarding the exchange of opinion induces some phenomena, such as the concentration of opinions or the cyclic-in-time behaviour of the distribution function. We provide an existence and uniqueness result for the model and numerically test it in some relevant cases.

Domaines: Equations aux dérivées partielles [math.AP]

Laurent Boudin, Aurore Mercier, Francesco Salvarani. Conciliatory and contradictory dynamics in opinion formation. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2012, 391, pp.5672-5684. ⟨10.1016/j.physa.2012.05.070⟩. ⟨hal-00613119⟩