Computational Model Library

Displaying 2 of 2 results confirmation bias clear

This model simulates the opinion dynamics of COVID-19 vaccination to examine especially how fears and cognitive bias contribute to the opinion polarisation and vaccination rate. In studying the opinion dynamics of COVID-19 vaccination, this model refers to the HUMAT framework (Antosz et al, 2019). Many psychological and social processes are included in the model, such as dynamical decision-making processes of information exchange and fear formation, satisfaction evaluation, preferred decision selection and dissonance reduction.

Confirmation Bias is usually seen as a flaw of the human mind. However, in some tasks, it may also increase performance. Here, agents are confronted with a number of binary Signals (A, or B). They have a base detection rate, e.g. 50%, and after they detected one signal, they get biased towards this type of signal. This means, that they observe that kind of signal a bit better, and the other signal a bit worse. This is moderated by a variable called “bias_effect”, e.g. 10%. So an agent who detects A first, gets biased towards A and then improves its chance to detect A-signals by 10%. Thus, this agent detects A-Signals with the probability of 50%+10% = 60% and detects B-Signals with the probability of 50%-10% = 40%.
Given such a framework, agents that have the ability to be biased have better results in most of the scenarios.

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