Social Influences in Opinion Dynamics: the Role of Conformity

We introduce a model to study the effects of social influences in opinion dynamics. In particular, we analyze the voter model, from a socio psychological perspective, by considering the role of conformity. Conformity is a central issue in social psychology as it represents one of people’s behaviors that emerge as result of their interactions. We introduce a voter model where agents, linked in a network, change their opinion according to those of their neighbors and to their degree of conformity. In particular, agents can behave as conformists or non-conformists. In the former case, agents change opinion according to that of the majority of their social circle (i.e., the majority of their neighbors); in the latter case, they do the opposite, i.e., they assume the opposite opinion. We perform a computational study of the proposed model, with the aim to analyze the role of conformity in the voter model. Moreover, we want to investigate whether it is possible to achieve some kind of equilibrium or of order in the system. The two more interesting results are that the amount of non-conformist agents in the population plays a central role in these dynamics, and the topology of the agent network has not a prominent role in the proposed model. Finally, we study the outcomes of the model by considering that agents can change also their degree of conformity over time, i.e., they can turn their behavior from conformist to non-conformist and vice-versa.