•An adaptive consensus model based on feedback mechanism and social interaction is proposed to improve the consensus efficiency.•The stubbornness of decision makers to the initial opinions is ...considered in the consensus model.•The evolution of weights and self-confidence degrees of decision makers is integrated into the consensus model.•Social interaction may have a double-sided impact on the consensus reaching.
Many consensus models in social network group decision making (SNGDM) have been reported to obtain a collective solution despite the initial opinions of decision makers (DMs) may be different. However, these models ignore the obstinacy of DMs to their initial opinions, which violates the sociological research results. Aiming at the consensus reaching of SNGDM where DMs are stubborn to their initial opinions, this paper proposes a novel consensus model based on the passive adjustment based on feedback mechanism (PA-FM) and active adjustment based on social interaction (AA-SI), which adaptively adopts AA-SI or PA-FM in each round according to the opinion distribution of DMs. Specially, the proposed consensus model assimilates the advantage of PA-FM and AA-SI, where adjustment intensity of DMs affects the consensus level of PA-FM, and stubbornness degree of DMs affects that of AA-SI. To elucidate the performance and advantages of the proposed consensus model, a hypothetical application and three simulation analyses are constructed. The results show that (1) In the decision-making group that is stubborn to the initial opinions, social interaction has a beneficial or harmful effect on the consensus reaching, depending on the stubbornness degree and opinion distribution of DMs; and (2) Given any stubbornness degree and adjustment intensity, the proposed consensus model outperforms existing consensus methods in consensus efficiency and success rate.
Abstract
Goal orientation theory identifies
mastery-oriented people as adaptive and highly persistent when pursuing a goal. Performance-oriented people are described as being less persistent, and ...tend to show more maladaptive responses. However, previous works that have studied persistence have not always found that performance-oriented participants show the least persistence. In addition, it is not easy to conclude if the persistence measured in the studies implies a stubborn response and therefore if it is a maladaptive response. In this work, we classify participants as mastery- or performance-oriented using an objective test and we employ a behavioral task to study persistence defined as stubbornness. When studying response patterns, we found that performance-oriented students were more stubborn. The behavioral analysis performed in this work offers complement and rich information and provides empirical support for the goal orientation theory.
The opinion evolution problem is studied in this paper for stubborn individuals in cooperation–competition networks, where the individuals’ opinion dynamics is described by the Friedkin–Johnsen model ...and the competitive relationship between individuals is characterized by negative weights. Then the lifting approach is successfully applied to the Friedkin–Johnsen model to deal with the influence of the negative weights while the path-dependence theory is used to the transition of two arbitrarily adjacent topics. Starting from the weight topology, the relationship between the weight topology and the augmented topology is established, and some sufficient conditions about achieving neutrality, bipartite consensus and convergence for the individuals’ opinions in a sequence of topics are obtained. Interestingly, a necessary and sufficient condition is given to ensure bipartite consensus for the individuals’ opinions under the premise that the weight topology is structurally unbalanced. Furthermore, the Friedkin–Johnsen model with dynamic stubbornness is also considered, and the concept of common topic subsequence is introduced. It is proved that all elements of the topic transfer matrix are positive for the common topic subsequence, and neutrality and bipartite consensus for the individuals’ opinions can be achieved for different types of weight topologies, respectively. Finally, numerical examples are given to support the correctness of the theoretical results.
Political polarization is perceived as a threat to democracies. Using the Galam model of opinion dynamics deployed in a five-dimensional parameter space, I show that polarization is the byproduct of ...an essential hallmark of a vibrant democratic society, namely open and informal discussions among agents. Indeed, within a homogeneous social community with floaters, the dynamics lead gradually toward unanimity (zero entropy). Polarization can eventually appear as the juxtaposition of non-mixing social groups sharing different prejudices about the issue at stake. On the other hand, the inclusion of contrarian agents produces a polarization within a community that mixes when their proportion
is beyond a critical value xc=16≈0.167 for discussing groups of size three and four. Similarly, the presence of stubborn agents also produces a polarization of a community that mixes when the proportion of stubborn agents is greater than some critical value. For equal proportions of stubborn agents
along each opinion, ac=29≈0.22 for group size four against ac=14=0.25 for group size three. However, the evaluation of the proportion of individual opinion shifts at the attractor 12 and indicates that the polarization produced by contrarians is fluid with a good deal of agents who keep shifting between the two opposed blocks (high entropy). That favors a coexistence of opposite opinions in a divided community. In contrast, the polarization created by stubborn agents is found to be frozen with very few individuals shifting opinion between the two opinions (low entropy). That yields a basis for the emergence of hate between the frozen opposed blocks.
In alternating-offer bargaining, a seller is “insistent” if she demands the same asking price more than once. We provide empirical evidence on insistence and inform the theoretical literature by ...analyzing millions of eBay bargaining threads taken from Backus, Blake, Larsen, and Tadelis (2020). Focusing on the best predictors of first-period insistence, we find that insistence is sticky – a seller who was insistent in the past is more likely to be insistent in the future – and a seller is more likely insistent if the buyer has been particularly lenient or tough in her counteroffer.
Aging parents may respond to advice or help with daily problems from their grown children by insisting, resisting, or persisting in their ways or opinions, behaviors which are commonly viewed as ...stubbornness. Research has not examined how frequently such behaviors occur and what factors are associated with these behaviors.
Middle-aged adults and parents (N = 189 dyads) reported the prevalence of parental behaviors attributed to stubbornness. Utilizing hierarchical linear regression and multilevel modeling this exploratory study examined the association of parent stubbornness with individual and relationship-based characteristics and concordance in reports within dyads.
Over 77% of children and 66% of parents reported parents acting in ways attributed to stubbornness at least sometimes. Children reported higher levels of parental stubbornness than parents self-reported. Children's perceptions of occurrence were related to parent disability and relationship characteristics, while parents' self-reports were associated with their own personalities. Discrepancies in reports between parents and children were associated with child and parent characteristics.
This novel exploration demonstrated that individual and relationship-based factors are linked to the perceived expression of stubbornness by parents and that there is discordance in perceptions within families. Findings suggest a need for intervention to increase understanding within families.
The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami struck the northeastern coastal area of Japan on 11 March 2011, resulting in the relocation of 329,000 households and the repair of 572,000 houses. ...Previous studies predominantly addressed the impact of demographic factors on housing recovery. However, the types of housing recoveries and the impact of individual psycho-behavioral factors have been poorly addressed. This study examined the impact of survivors’ demographic and personality-trait factors using a discriminant analysis of five types of housing recovery among 573 survivors in the five years after the disaster. The results revealed two important axes. One axis discriminated self-procured (rebuilt, repaired, and chartered housing) houses from those that were publicly available (emergency temporary and public disaster housing) affected by three personality traits (stubbornness, problem-solving, and active well-being) and survivors’ age. The other axis represented rebuilt houses affected by household size. These results demonstrate that personality traits and not just demographic factors impact three types of self-procured housing recoveries. Further exploration of personality traits that impact housing recovery can improve post-disaster reconstruction and recovery practices.
People cope with relationship tensions in different ways. One such tension that is frequently reported is how adult children respond to conflicts with their aging parents when they see their parents ...as insisting, resisting, or persisting in their behaviors-acting in ways commonly attributed to stubbornness.
Middle-aged adults (N = 383) completed measures regarding their parents' stubbornness, their responses to that stubbornness, depressive symptoms, positive and negative relationship quality, and support they provide their parents. Multiple regression and multilevel models were utilized to examine whether middle-aged offspring's responses to perceived parent stubbornness were associated with the offspring's reported depressive symptoms, positive and negative relationship quality, and provision of support.
Adult children most frequently endorsed responding to parents' "stubborn" behaviors by "just letting their requests go." Results revealed associations of adult children's response strategies with their reports of depressive symptoms (more letting go), positive relationship quality (less letting go and more reasoning), negative relationship quality (more arguing, more rewording their request, and less reasoning), and the amount of support they provide to their parents (more arguing, more reasoning, and more waiting to address the concern another day).
Adult children's responses to perceived parent stubbornness are linked to individual and relationship functioning, as well as the support the children provide. Interventions to develop adaptive responses when there are differences in goals may prove useful for families.
This paper studies opinion dynamics for a set of heterogeneous populations of individuals pursuing two conflicting goals: to seek consensus and to be coherent with their initial opinions. The ...multi-population game under investigation is characterized by (i) rational agents who behave strategically, (ii) heterogeneous populations, and (iii) opinions evolving in response to local interactions. The main contribution of this paper is to encompass all of these aspects under the unified framework of mean-field game theory. We show that, assuming initial Gaussian density functions and affine control policies, the Fokker–Planck–Kolmogorov equation preserves Gaussianity over time. This fact is then used to explicitly derive expressions for the optimal control strategies when the players are myopic. We then explore consensus formation depending on the stubbornness of the involved populations: We identify conditions that lead to some elementary patterns, such as consensus, polarization, or plurality of opinions. Finally, under the baseline example of the presence of a stubborn population and a most gregarious one, we study the behavior of the model with a finite number of players, describing the dynamics of the average opinion, which is now a stochastic process. We also provide numerical simulations to show how the parameters impact the equilibrium formation.
The point of this study is to analyze the way Paulinus of Nola looks at the peasant world. Paulinus of Nola, a 4th century Christian poet, renounced his life of rich landowner to live up to his ...Christian faith: his outlook is not that of a sociologist nor a chronicler, but of a man actuated by the love of Christ. Realistically though he may depict the peasantry of Campania, he always shows himself tolerant and understanding towards the peasants who are for him a source of knowledge and moral enrichment.
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