Opinion Dynamics with Preference Matching: How the Desire to Meet Facilitates Opinion Exchange

The paper reexamines an agent-based model of opinion formation under bounded confidence with heterogeneous agents. The paper is novel in that it extends the standard model of opinion dynamics with the assumption that interacting agents share the desire to exchange opinion. In particular, the interaction between agents in the paper is modeled via a dynamic preferential-matching process wherein agents reveal their preferences to meet according to three features: coherence, opinion difference, and agents’ positive sentiments towards others. Only preferred matches meet and exchange opinion. Through an extensive series of simulation treatments, it follows that the presence of sentiments, on one hand, hardens the matching process between agents, which leads to less communication. But, on the other hand, it increases the diversity in preferred matches between agents and thereby leads to a better-integrated social network structure, which reflects in a reduction of the opinion variance between agents. Moreover, at combinations of (a) high tolerance, (b) low sensitivity of agents to opinion volatility, and (c) low levels of confidence, agents are occasionally drawn away from the consensus, forming small groups that hold extreme opinions.