# Simulating Opinion Dynamics with Networks of LLM-based Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09618 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09618/

## Key facts

- Cited by 154 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Social simulation and multi-agent debate, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 22 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Nov 2023.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Social simulation and multi-agent debate](https://mlsanity.com/agents/social-simulation-and-multi-agent-debate/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [Deep reinforcement learning from human preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03741/) (2017)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11416/) (2022)
- [Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08593/) (2019)
- [Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14325/) (2023)
- [Ethical and social risks of harm from Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04359/) (2021)
- [Whose Opinions Do Language Models Reflect?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17548/) (2023)
- [Using cognitive psychology to understand GPT-3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14576/) (2022)
- [SOTOPIA: Interactive Evaluation for Social Intelligence in Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11667/) (2023)
- [Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.04024/) (2022)
- [From Pretraining Data to Language Models to Downstream Tasks: Tracking the Trails of Political Biases Leading to Unfair NLP Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08283/) (2023)
- [Marked Personas: Using Natural Language Prompts to Measure Stereotypes in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18189/) (2023)
- [On the Origin of Hallucinations in Conversational Models: Is it the Datasets or the Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07931/) (2022)
- [Aligning Language Models to User Opinions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14929/) (2023)
- [CoMPosT: Characterizing and Evaluating Caricature in LLM Simulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11501/) (2023)
- [NLPositionality: Characterizing Design Biases of Datasets and Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01943/) (2023)
- [MetaAgents: Large Language Model Based Agents for Decision-Making on Teaming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06500/) (2023)
- [Turning large language models into cognitive models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03917/) (2023)
- [Lyfe Agents: Generative agents for low-cost real-time social interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02172/) (2023)
- [Quantifying the Impact of Large Language Models on Collective Opinion Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03313/) (2023)
- [From Competition to Complementarity: Comparative Influence Diffusion and Maximization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.00317/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 154)

- [Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01990/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13334/) (2025)
- [Emergent social conventions and collective bias in LLM populations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08948/) (2024)
- [Systematic Biases in LLM Simulations of Debates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04049/) (2024)
- [From Individual to Society: A Survey on Social Simulation Driven by Large Language Model-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03563/) (2024)
- [Unveiling the Truth and Facilitating Change: Towards Agent-based Large-scale Social Movement Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16333/) (2024)
- [Nicer Than Humans: How do Large Language Models Behave in the Prisoner's Dilemma?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13605/) (2024)
- [The Persuasive Power of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15523/) (2023)
- [Y Social: an LLM-powered Social Media Digital Twin](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00818/) (2024)
- [Beyond Demographics: Aligning Role-playing LLM-based Agents Using Human Belief Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17232/) (2024)
- [LLMs generate structurally realistic social networks but overestimate political homophily](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16629/) (2024)
- [Decoding Echo Chambers: LLM-Powered Simulations Revealing Polarization in Social Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19338/) (2024)
- [Network Formation and Dynamics Among Multi-LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10659/) (2024)
- [TeachTune: Reviewing Pedagogical Agents Against Diverse Student Profiles with Simulated Students](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04078/) (2024)
- [Towards a Design Guideline for RPA Evaluation: A Survey of Large Language Model-Based Role-Playing Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13012/) (2025)
- [No Preference Left Behind: Group Distributional Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20299/) (2024)
- [Population-Aligned Persona Generation for LLM-based Social Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10127/) (2025)
- [Lying with Truths: Open-Channel Multi-Agent Collusion for Belief Manipulation via Generative Montage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01685/) (2026)
- [Psychometric Alignment: Capturing Human Knowledge Distributions via Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15645/) (2024)
- [When LLMs Play the Telephone Game: Cultural Attractors as Conceptual Tools to Evaluate LLMs in Multi-turn Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04503/) (2024)
- [Unmasking Conversational Bias in AI Multiagent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14844/) (2025)
- [Simulating Rumor Spreading in Social Networks using LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01450/) (2025)
- [LLM-based multi-agent poetry generation in non-cooperative environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03659/) (2024)
- [LMAgent: A Large-scale Multimodal Agents Society for Multi-user Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09237/) (2024)
- [Does Socialization Emerge in AI Agent Society? A Case Study of Moltbook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14299/) (2026)
- [Tracking the perspectives of interacting language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11938/) (2024)
- [CTINexus: Automatic Cyber Threat Intelligence Knowledge Graph Construction Using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21060/) (2024)
- [LLM2Swarm: Robot Swarms that Responsively Reason, Plan, and Collaborate through LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11387/) (2024)
- [Bridging the Creativity Understanding Gap: Small-Scale Human Alignment Enables Expert-Level Humor Ranking in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20356/) (2025)
- [MF-LLM: Simulating Population Decision Dynamics via a Mean-Field Large Language Model Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21582/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurately simulating human opinion dynamics is crucial for understanding a variety of societal phenomena, including polarization and the spread of misinformation. However, the agent-based models (ABMs) commonly used for such simulations often over-simplify human behavior. We propose a new approach to simulating opinion dynamics based on populations of Large Language Models (LLMs). Our findings reveal a strong inherent bias in LLM agents towards producing accurate information, leading simulated agents to consensus in line with scientific reality. This bias limits their utility for understanding resistance to consensus views on issues like climate change. After inducing confirmation bias through prompt engineering, however, we observed opinion fragmentation in line with existing agent-based modeling and opinion dynamics research. These insights highlight the promise and limitations of LLM agents in this domain and suggest a path forward: refining LLMs with real-world discourse to better simulate the evolution of human beliefs.