The Memory Influence on Opinion Dynamics in Coopetitive Social Networks: Analysis, Application, and Simulation

In social psychology, it is well known that the evolution of opinion dynamics in a society depends not only on the current opinions of individuals, but also on the past opinions stored in memory. However, it is still difficult to clearly characterize and analyze the memory influence on opinion dynamics in social networks, especially in coopetitive (cooperative and competitive) networks. In this article, we propose a novel model of opinion dynamics to describe the memory influence in coopetitive networks. In this model, memory and memoryless communication rules are simultaneously proposed for the opinion update mechanism. In terms of the network topological structure and the graph spectrum, sufficient and/or necessary conditions are, respectively, established to ensure that the opinion is nonstationary polarization, nonstationary consensus, and neutral. We employ Kahneman's seminal experiment on choices in risky and riskless contexts to interpret the results obtained in this article. Simulation analysis shows that the memory capacity of the individual is inversely proportional to the speeds of ultimate opinion formation, and the opinions reach a persistent disagreement when the individuals are very confident.