The spread of agents’ opinions and beliefs have so far been studied independently. However, people beliefs may influence their opinions and beliefs should not be too dissonant with opinions. Fukuro’s goal is to consider how they are related and this relation’s influence on their propagation in a population.
The objectives of the project are the following.
To design such a hybrid model For that purpose, we put forth a model that integrates social operations which communicate opinions and beliefs and cognitive operations which maintain the coherence of an agent’s beliefs and opinions. The former are tightly connected to classical opinion dynamic and belief revision operations. The latter are guided by values held by agents: deep beliefs that help agents to recognize what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Agents will use them to determine preferences between alternative opinions and beliefs. The value-based mechanism is balanced with the inertia, or propensity to avoid change, of agents. They allow for modeling various types of agents (favoring opinions, favoring beliefs, eager to change, resisting to change, etc.).
To experiment with the model In order to understand its behavior and the effect of various parameters, the proposed model will be simulated under various conditions. Sensitivity analyses will be performed on their influence on the amplitude of change in beliefs and opinions (stability) and the distance between beliefs or opinions (polarisation/convergence).
To study specific questions such as
Effects of the opinion-beliefs connection on stability and convergence Experiment results show that, by maintaining the coherence between beliefs and opinions of individual agents, the social beliefs and opinions resulting from their propagation is indeed affected. In particular, contrary to what happens with the classical opinion dynamics and belief propagation procedures, connecting opinions and beliefs make them not necessarily converge and not even stabilize. This means that the model supports agents having polarized opinions and beliefs. The outcome of the propagation depends on the workflow, topics, values, and initial graph topology, beliefs and opinions.
Influence of the opinion-belief connection on echo chambers Echo chamber, the state in which agents are split into groups sharing the same opinions, is a well-known phenomenon in social networks. Opinion dynamics models have been proposed to explain how the phenomenon occurs through agents revising their opinions. We compared opinion propagation with respect to belief influence. Simulation results show that echo chambers are reinforced by interactions between opinions and beliefs [Kataoka 2025a].
Properties of synchronisation operators For agents, holding opinions and beliefs may induce cognitive dissonance if these are not aligned. Agents may want to reduce this dissonance. For that purpose, we introduced cognitive operators which align opinions with beliefs (OF) or beliefs with opinions (BA). In order, to synchronise them on an equal foot, we are introducing operators (SX, CH…) computing a trade-off between beliefs and opinions preservation. We have already established in which conditions all these operators preserve consistency. We are now considering other properties such as convergence.
Influence of the opinion-belief connection on belief diversity Besides echo chambers, we want to establish whether connecting opinions and beliefs preserves or harms their diversity. We have developed and implemented diversity measures applied to belief and knowledge. We are pursuing work in order to establish the effects of the connection on diversity. We have performed some preliminary analyses on the experiments targetting echo chambers.
Behaviour of synchronisation operators We have also started to study the behaviour of synchronisation, or cognitive, operators in particular in their capabilities to create attractors for both beliefs and opinions. Ideally this work should lead to understand better the non linear transition of opinion changes.