Orateur
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. Building on classical bounded-confidence opinion models and self-propelled swarming models, 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. We perform an extensive numerical study of the relevant parameters and their effect on the dynamics. We derive the mean-field partial differential equations for this coupled individual-based model, which will lay the basis for the study of the long-term behaviour of the system. 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.
Estrada-Rodriguez, Villegas-Morral, Wolfram (2025) Decision making in heterogeneous self-propelled particle systems https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06573