On the role of evangelism in consensus formation: a simulation approach

Abstract

Abstract Purpose Opinions continuously evolve in society. While conservative ideas may get replaced by a new one, some views remain immutable. Opinion formation and innovation diffusion have witnessed lots of attention in the last decade due to its widespread applicability in the diverse domain of science and technology. We analyse these scenarios in which interactions at the micro level results in the changes in opinions at the macro level in a population of predefined ideological groups. Methods We use the Bass model, otherwise well known for understanding innovation diffusion phenomena, to compute adoption probabilities of three opinion states-zealot, extremists and moderates. Thereafter, we employ cellular automata to explore the emergence of opinions through local and overlapped interactions between agents (people). NetLogo environment has been used to develop an agent-based model, simulating different ideological scenarios. Results Simulation results validate a critical proportion of committed individuals as a plausible basis for ideological shifts in societies. The analysis elucidates upon the role of moderates in the population and emergence of varying opinions. The results further delineate the role of evangelism through social and non-social methods in propagating views. Conclusion The results obtained from these simulations endorse the conclusions reported in previous studies regarding the role of a critical zealot population, and the preponderance of non-social influence. We, however, use two-phase opinion model with different experimental settings. Additionally, we examine global observable, such as entropy of the system to reveal common patterns of adoption in the views and evenness of population after reaching a consensus.