An opinion diffusion model with decision-making groups: The influence of the opinion's acceptability

An opinion dynamic model with decision-making groups was proposed to study the process of adopting new opinions or ideas by individuals. The opinion's acceptability is introduced to distinguish the general character of different opinions. The simulation results on a free-scale network demonstrate that when two opinions have similar acceptability, the opinion supported by more decision-making groups in the beginning will eventually win the support of more agents, whereas an opinion supported by fewer decision-making groups in the beginning may be supported by the majority at the end only if it has better acceptability, and if the tolerance threshold of the society is higher than a specific value.