Speaker
Description
Inspired by empirical observations in animal swarming -- particularly in schooling fish -- we propose an opinion-swarming model for self-propelled particles in order to understand the effect of uninformed individuals in consensus formation \cite{z}. Building on classical bounded-confidence opinion models \cite{k} and self-propelled swarming models \cite{d}, we introduce a three-population framework that distinguishes between leaders, followers, and uninformed individuals. Particles are described by their position, velocity, and a continuous opinion variable; they interact through self-propulsion, alignment, attraction-repulsion forces, and opinion-based mechanisms. First, we derive and analyse an individual-based coupled model that integrates spatial swarming dynamics with the evolution of individual opinions \cite{n}. We perform an extensive numerical study of the relevant parameters and their effect on the dynamics. To study the long-term behaviour of the system, we rigorously derive the mean-field partial differential equations for this coupled individual-based model following \cite{l}. Our analysis reveals that uninformed individuals, despite lacking any opinion bias, significantly influence group dynamics by diluting the effect of leaders and promoting more democratic decision-making. These findings support the role of uninformed agents in collective decision-making and provide the first analytical insights into leadership and decision-making in heterogeneous crowds.
Bibliography
@article{z,
title={Uninformed individuals promote democratic consensus in animal groups},
author={Couzin, Iain D and others},
journal={science},
volume={334},
number={6062},
pages={1578--1580},
year={2011},
publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science}
}
@article{n,
title={Decision making in heterogeneous self-propelled particle systems},
author={Estrada-Rodriguez, Gissell and Villegas-Morral, Víctor and Wolfram, Marie-Therese},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.06573},
year={2025}
}
@article{d,
title={Self-propelled particles with soft-core interactions: patterns, stability, and collapse},
author={D’Orsogna, Maria R and others},
journal={Physical review letters},
volume={96},
number={10},
pages={104302},
year={2006},
publisher={APS}
}
@article{l,
title={A simple proof of the Cucker-Smale flocking dynamics and mean-field limit},
author={Ha, Seung-Yeal and Liu, Jian-Guo},
year={2009},
journal = {Communications in Mathematical Sciences}
}
@article{k,
title={Opinion dynamics and bounded confidence: models, analysis and simulation},
author={Hegselmann, Rainer and Krause, Ulrich},
year={2002},
journal={Journal of Artifical Societies and Social Simulation}
}
