Social influenced decision making: A belief-based model analysis

摘要

Study on the effects of social influence on decision making is a hot research topic in the interdisciplinary field of decision making, complex networks and social impact. In this paper, a new perspective to characterise the effects of social influence is proposed grounded on belief theory, a promising tool in reasoning under uncertainty. It considers the situation of influence diffusion in networked structure by mapping belief values into diffusion process and attributing a parameter reflecting the openness of an individual to his/her social neighbour's influence to edge weight. By doing this, the evolving process of belief updates can be simulated as well as the trend in individuals' decision making.