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Traditional opinion dynamics models usually assume positiverelationships, where opinions of individuals tend to get closer wheninteraction happens. However, these models can not explain whyextreme opinions appear when there are no extreme opinions at thebeginning. In this paper, we believe that individuals shifting awayopinions is due to the negative relationships. We focus onrelationship heterogeneity in social networks, and propose a modelto capture the positive relationships as well as negative ones. Wecharacterize the relationship between two individuals byrelationship factor, and specify the opinion adaptation behaviors fordifferent relationship types. To explore the proposed model, weconsider opinion dynamics in small world networks, and study theimpact of relationship heterogeneity on opinion dynamics by varyingthe fraction of negative relationships. We find that negativerelationships cause extreme opinions, even when the fraction ofnegative relationships is very small, and the largest and secondlargest opinion gaps first increase, and then decrease when thefraction of negative relationships varies from 0 to 1. |
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Keywords:Opinion dynamics; relationship heterogeneity; relationship factor; social networks |
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