DIEP seminar by Jan Korbel
From Spins to Society: Modeling Collective Social Behavior with Statistical Physics
Sociophysics is an interdisciplinary field that applies methods from statistical physics to understand collective social phenomena, such as the emergence of polarization in societies. Two key mechanisms often cited as drivers of social dynamics are homophily—the tendency to form friendly ties with like-minded individuals—and social balance—the overrepresentation of triadic relationships where either all three connections are friendly or one is friendly, while the remaining two are hostile. These ideas are captured by the classic sayings:
"Birds of a feather flock together",
"The friend of my friend is my friend; the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
In this talk, I will present recent results showing how these two principles can be jointly modeled using tools from statistical physics. I begin by introducing a model inspired by the Ising model, in which homophilic interactions naturally give rise to social balance as an emergent property. I then show how this model can be extended to explore various forms of collective behavior, focusing in particular on the distribution of group sizes in social networks. I also examine how the topological features of the underlying network—such as node degree—relate to the rise of polarization. Finally, I will discuss how external influences, such as political or media campaigns, can be incorporated into the model to study their impact on opinion dynamics.
If you wish to attend this seminar online, please send an email to m.t.pham@uva.nl to receive the zoom-link.