Title: Opinion evolution in time-varying social influence networks with prejudiced agents,
Abstract: Investigation of social influence dynamics requires mathematical models that
are "simple" enough to admit rigorous analysis, and yet sufficiently "rich" to
capture salient features of social groups. Thus, the mechanism of iterative
opinion pooling from (DeGroot, 1974), which can explain the generation of
consensus, was elaborated in (Friedkin and Johnsen, 1999) to take into account
individuals' ongoing attachments to their initial opinions, or prejudices. The
"anchorage" of individuals to their prejudices may disable reaching consensus
and cause disagreement in a social influence network. Further elaboration of
this model may be achieved by relaxing its restrictive assumption of a
time-invariant influence network. During opinion dynamics on an issue, arcs of
interpersonal influence may be added or subtracted from the network, and the
influence weights assigned by an individual to his/her neighbors may alter. In
this paper, we establish new important properties of the (Friedkin and Johnsen,
1999) opinion formation model, and also examine its extension to time-varying
social influence networks.