Impact of perception models on friendship paradox and opinion formation

Eun Lee, Sungmin Lee, Young-Ho Eom, Petter Holme, and Hang-Hyun Jo
Phys. Rev. E 99, 052302 – Published 10 May 2019

Abstract

Topological heterogeneities of social networks have a strong impact on the individuals embedded in those networks. One of the interesting phenomena driven by such heterogeneities is the friendship paradox (FP), stating that the mean degree of one's neighbors is larger than the degree of oneself. Alternatively, one can use the median degree of neighbors as well as the fraction of neighbors having a higher degree than oneself. Each of these reflects on how people perceive their neighborhoods, i.e., their perception models, hence how they feel peer pressure. In our paper, we study the impact of perception models on the FP by comparing three versions of the perception model in networks generated with a given degree distribution and a tunable degree-degree correlation or assortativity. The increasing assortativity is expected to decrease network-level peer pressure, while we find a nontrivial behavior only for the mean-based perception model. By simulating opinion formation, in which the opinion adoption probability of an individual is given as a function of individual peer pressure, we find that it takes the longest time to reach consensus when individuals adopt the median-based perception model compared to other versions. Our findings suggest that one needs to consider the proper perception model for better modeling human behaviors and social dynamics.

  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Received 13 August 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.99.052302

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Interdisciplinary PhysicsNetworksStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Eun Lee1, Sungmin Lee2, Young-Ho Eom3, Petter Holme4, and Hang-Hyun Jo5,6,7,*

  • 1Department of Mathematics, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA
  • 2Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea
  • 3Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XH, United Kingdom
  • 4Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa 226-8503, Japan
  • 5Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, Pohang 37673, Republic of Korea
  • 6Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 37673, Republic of Korea
  • 7Department of Computer Science, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo FI-00076, Finland

  • *Corresponding author: hang-hyun.jo@apctp.org.

Article Text (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

References (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand
Issue

Vol. 99, Iss. 5 — May 2019

Reuse & Permissions
Access Options
Author publication services for translation and copyediting assistance advertisement

Authorization Required


×
×

Images

×

Sign up to receive regular email alerts from Physical Review E

Log In

Cancel
×

Search


Article Lookup

Paste a citation or DOI

Enter a citation
×