The following seminar session of DIEP (Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena) might be of interest to the LIRa audience.
Date and time: Thursday, May 20th 2021, 11:00-12:30, Amsterdam time.
Speaker: Sven Banisch (Max Planck Institute, Leipzig)
Title: Social Feedback Theory: Modeling collective opinion phenomena by learning from the feedback of others
Abstract: Humans are sensitive to social approval and disapproval. The feedback that others provide on our expressions of opinion is an important driver for adaptation and change. Social feedback theory provides a framework for modeling collective opinion processes based on these principles. The theory departs from previous models by differentiating an externally expressed opinion from an internal evaluation of it. Opinion dynamics is conceived as repeated games that agents play within their social network and to which they adapt by reward-based learning. Within this setting, game theoretic notions of equilibrium can be used to characterize structural conditions for qualitatively different regimes of collective opinion expression. In this talk, I aim for a broad perspective and discuss two models addressing emergent phenomena such as polarization and collective silence.