Hiro Kataoka, Jérôme Euzenat, Koji Hasebe, How can beliefs alter opinions? Joint opinion and belief evolution, in: (ed), Proc. 18th international conference on agents and artificial intelligence (ICAART), Marbella (ES), pp1011–1022, 2026
Multi-agent opinion dynamics and belief propagation have been studied independently. However, people beliefs may influence their opinions and beliefs should not be too dissonant with opinions. This paper considers how to combine opinions and beliefs so that they preserve the cognitive coherence of agents. For that purpose, it integrates social opinion and belief propagation using classical procedures and two new specific operations guided by values held by agents. In order to assess the effect of this model, we experiment with such agents, varying the processing workflow, graph topology, initial beliefs and opinions, and values. Results show that, by maintaining the coherence between beliefs and opinions of individual agents, the social beliefs and opinions resulting from their propagation is indeed affected. In particular, contrary to what happens with the classical opinion dynamics and belief propagation procedures, connecting opinions and beliefs make them not necessarily converge and not even stabilize. This means that the model supports agents having polarized opinions and beliefs. The outcome of the propagation depends on the workflow, topics, values, and initial graph topology, beliefs and opinions.
Social networks, Multi-agent simulation, Opinion dynamics, Belief merge, Belief propagation
Hiro Kataoka, Jérôme Euzenat, Koji Hasebe, Exchanging and updating opinions and beliefs reinforces echo chambers, in: Proc. 39th Annual conference of the Japanese society on artificial intelligence (JSAI), Osaka (JP), pp3K1IS302–3K1IS302, 2025
Echo chamber, the state in which agents are split into groups sharing the same opinions, is a well-known phenomenon in social networks. Opinion dynamics models have been proposed to explain how the phenomenon occurs through agents revising their opinions. However, social network users also exchange beliefs supporting their opinions. This has not been taken into account. In this paper, we extend an existing opinion dynamics model by allowing agents to exchange and update both beliefs and opinions. The process of updating beliefs is described based on the classical belief revision theory. Beliefs and opinions can influence each other guided by values that agents share. We compare opinion propagation with respect to belief influence. Simulation results show that echo chambers are reinforced by interactions between opinions and beliefs.
Echo chambers, Opinion dynamics, Belief revision