91,957 research outputs found
The Impact of Recommendation Systems on Opinion Dynamics: Microscopic versus Macroscopic Effects
Recommendation systems are widely used in web services, such as social
networks and e-commerce platforms, to serve personalized content to the users
and, thus, enhance their experience. While personalization assists users in
navigating through the available options, there have been growing concerns
regarding its repercussions on the users and their opinions. Examples of
negative impacts include the emergence of filter bubbles and the amplification
of users' confirmation bias, which can cause opinion polarization and
radicalization. In this paper, we study the impact of recommendation systems on
users, both from a microscopic (i.e., at the level of individual users) and a
macroscopic (i.e., at the level of a homogenous population) perspective.
Specifically, we build on recent work on the interactions between opinion
dynamics and recommendation systems to propose a model for this closed loop,
which we then study both analytically and numerically. Among others, our
analysis reveals that shifts in the opinions of individual users do not always
align with shifts in the opinion distribution of the population. In particular,
even in settings where the opinion distribution appears unaltered (e.g.,
measured via surveys across the population), the opinion of individual users
might be significantly distorted by the recommendation system.Comment: Accepted for presentation at, and publication in the proceedings of,
the 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Contro
Collective dynamics of belief evolution under cognitive coherence and social conformity
Human history has been marked by social instability and conflict, often
driven by the irreconcilability of opposing sets of beliefs, ideologies, and
religious dogmas. The dynamics of belief systems has been studied mainly from
two distinct perspectives, namely how cognitive biases lead to individual
belief rigidity and how social influence leads to social conformity. Here we
propose a unifying framework that connects cognitive and social forces together
in order to study the dynamics of societal belief evolution. Each individual is
endowed with a network of interacting beliefs that evolves through interaction
with other individuals in a social network. The adoption of beliefs is affected
by both internal coherence and social conformity. Our framework explains how
social instabilities can arise in otherwise homogeneous populations, how small
numbers of zealots with highly coherent beliefs can overturn societal
consensus, and how belief rigidity protects fringe groups and cults against
invasion from mainstream beliefs, allowing them to persist and even thrive in
larger societies. Our results suggest that strong consensus may be insufficient
to guarantee social stability, that the cognitive coherence of belief-systems
is vital in determining their ability to spread, and that coherent
belief-systems may pose a serious problem for resolving social polarization,
due to their ability to prevent consensus even under high levels of social
exposure. We therefore argue that the inclusion of cognitive factors into a
social model is crucial in providing a more complete picture of collective
human dynamics
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