著者

志村 誠 小林 哲郎 村上 史朗

出版者

日本社会心理学会

雑誌

社会心理学研究 (ISSN:09161503)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.21, no.1, pp.32-43, 2005

---

The rapid spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) enables people to maintain ties with friends and relatives who are physically distant, and to establish new ties through the Internet. To examine the social consequence of using ICTs at the macro level, we extended Latane's DSIT simulation model by adding interaction with distant agents. The results show that the largest and the mean cluster sizes of minority were smaller than Latane's model, but the number of minority clusters increased. Even if they are surrounded by others of different opinions, people can keep their opinions unchanged through ties with distant others. Such ties decrease the relative effects of adjacent neighbors. As a whole, people can form the homogeneous networks that are free from physical restriction to some degree. Consequently, minority opinions are able to survive.