Sentiment Cycles in Discrete-Time Homogeneous Networks

• Autor(a) principal: Gomes, Orlando
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/6899
• topic: Homogeneous networks, Sentiment-switching, Stability, Endogenous fluctuations, Waves of optimism and pessimism

Consider a network connecting individual agents that are endowed with distinct sentiments or ‘views of the world’. Specifically, assume that each node in the network contains an agent that, at a given period t, can be found in one of five states: sentiment neutrality, exuberant optimism, non-exuberant optimism, exuberant pessimism and nonexuberant pessimism. Local interaction rules, similar to those one encounters in rumor propagation models, make agents change their sentiment as they contact with others. Under a continuous-time framework, the proposed setting delivers a stable fixed-point equilibrium, meaning that the shares of agents in each sentiment category will converge to constant steady-state levels. The inspection of the same structure of analysis in discrete time indicates that the stability outcome continues to hold when the connectivity degree is equal to 1. However, this result might change as one considers higher-order connectivity. In this last case, persistent endogenous waves of optimism and pessimism emerge under a reasonable parameterization of the model.