Modeling opinion dynamics: Theoretical analysis and continuous approximation

Abstract

Frequently we revise our first opinions after talking over with other individuals because we get convinced. Argumentation is a verbal and social process aimed at convincing. It includes conversation and persuasion and the agreement is reached because the new arguments are incorporated. Given the wide range of opinion formation mathematical approaches, there are however no models of opinion dynamics with nonlocal pair interactions analytically solvable. In this paper we present a novel analytical framework developed to solve the master equations with non-local kernels. For this we used a simple model of opinion formation where individuals tend to get more similar after each interactions, no matter their opinion differences, giving rise to nonlinear differential master equation with non-local terms. Simulation results show an excellent agreement with results obtained by the theoretical estimation.