Abstract
The majority of theories and models of social influence tend to focus on the social-behavioral level and implicitly discount the potential role of cognitive explanations to ground out social phenomena in cognitive operations. The present study describes a preliminary simulation of social influence and conformity using two possible cognitive mechanisms: the first a homophily-based model that weighs belief updating based on generating a latent trust magnitude, and the second is a novel similarity-learning mechanism that weighs memory retrieval via similarity. While the homophily model was able to capture both influence and conformity effects based on degree of initial strength in the belief and crystallization of the belief, the similarity-based model always conformed. Both models exhibited initial learning and larger belief updating while settling to a relatively-stable state over time. Future implications for modeling influence via cognitive factors are discussed.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research MURI Award N0001422MP00465 and Award 10407118530 from the DoD Basic Research Office. The views expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States Military Academy, U.S Army, Office of Naval Research, or U.S. Government.
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Thomson, R., Lebiere, C. (2024). Comparing Similarity and Homophily-Based Cognitive Models of Influence and Conformity. In: Thomson, R., et al. Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling. SBP-BRiMS 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14972. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72241-7_5
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