It’s The Network

It’s The Network: Penn Researchers Examine Behavior, Consensus Building Influenced By Network Structure

A team of computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania investigating the political, social and economic struggle between individual self-interest and the need to build a consensus have learned that, depending only on the structure of the network of participants, they can engineer surprising experimental results.

For example, depending solely on the ability of individuals to interact in a network, as well as the number of connections they have to other participants and other structural properties, there are networks that generate the global adoption of minority viewpoints. In addition, the team demonstrated, individuals with extreme behaviors, or a greater awareness of the incentives of others, may actually improve the collective performance of the group. Put simply, stubbornness or extremism may pay off when it comes to social welfare...

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