Cognitive models of influence dynamics in a conformity simulation

Abstract The majority of theories and models of social influence tend to focus on the social-behavioral level and implicitly discount the potential role of cognitive explanations to ground out social phenomena in cognitive operations. The present study describes a preliminary simulation of social influence and conformity using three possible cognitive mechanisms: the first is a homophily-based model that weighs belief updating based on generating a latent trust magnitude relying entirely on strategy selection, and the second two are novel similarity-learning and structure-mapping mechanisms embodied in the ACT-R cognitive architecture (Anderson 1990) that spread association via learned similarities based on communicating similar beliefs from other agents. Across three simulations (homophily, similarity, similarity+structure mapping), the homophily model was the only model capable of capturing both influence and conformity effects. The similarity model quickly flipped based on the statistics of the messages (i.e., more opposing messages than supporting messages) while the similarity+structure mapping eventually led to a convergence and averaging across beliefs. Each model exhibited initial learning and larger belief updating while settling to a relatively-stable state over time. While more research is required, the current simulation implies that architectural solutions may not be sufficiently robust to adequately account for influence and conformity effects, while the homophily-based trust model was able to model these effects driven by the dynamics of human memory.