SEOE: A Sleeper Effect based Opinion Evolution Model in Social Networks

The formation of group consensus plays a pivotal role in various fields such as social decision-making and political elections, exerting a profound impact on societal stability and development. To investigate the mechanisms and influencing factors behind the achievement of group consensus, in this paper we propose a novel opinion evolution model based on the sleeper effect, namely SEOE. The impact of factors such as agents’ confidence bounds, the number of opinion leaders, and the opinion values of opinion leaders on opinion evolution are explored by extensive simulation experiments on both artificially generated networks and real social networks. The results of the paper can provide guidance for social management and decision-making.