An extended analysis of factors contributing to opinion formation in a bipartite society of mavens and laypeople

Abstract

Communication and sharing of opinions play a crucial role in shaping the views of a person in a society. Interactions with other people enable a person to interpret their views and expound his opinion. Ordinarily, people tend to change their opinions in compliance with those having significantly higher expertise thereby leading to a bipartite society of two intellectual groups i.e. mavens (highly intellectual and confident people) and laypeople (diffident people with little or no experience and knowledge). However, the sharing of information in a group is influenced by the weight of advice with which people consider opinion of others and several control factors like interaction procedure adopted, possibility of mutual exchange of information, and the time at which information is updated. Moreover, the effects of these factors are observable in both physical and digital societies during opinion formation. This study is build upon the prior work of Moussad et al. (PLoS ONE 8:78433, 2013).