spinson

Blend of spin (“property of a subatomic particle”) +‎ person. Based on the idea that a person's opinion can be likened to the up or down spin of a quark. Coined by Piotr Nyczka and Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron in 2013.^[1]

spinson (plural spinsons)

1. (sociophysics) An agent in an agent-based model representing a person who holds one of two opposite opinions on a topic (for example, "for" or "against").
   • 2018, Tomasz Weron, Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska, Rafał Weron, “The role of educational trainings in the diffusion of smart metering platforms: An agent-based modeling approach”, in Physica A, volume 505, →DOI, page 594:

     The evolution of a spinson’s opinion is governed by two different processes: (i) independence and (ii) social and mass-media influence.

   • 2018, Pawel Sobkowicz, “Opinion Dynamics Model Based on Cognitive Biases of Complex Agents”, in Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, volume 21, →DOI:

     The model proposed in this work belongs to the ‘rich feature agent’ or ‘complex agent’ categories, in contrast to the simplified ‘spinson’ models.

   • 2021, Jamil Civitarese, “External fields, independence, and disorder in q-voter models”, in Physical Review E, volume 103, number 1, →DOI:

     The initial version of the q-voter has N spinsons connected on a complete graph. Among this initial population of spinsons, a q-sized committee is picked at random to influence another randomly selected spinson called a voter. If the committee is homogeneous, then the voter assumes the same value as the spinsons from the lobby; otherwise, it changes its opinion with probability ${\displaystyle \epsilon }$.

• Pinsons, spinons