2025 · Kilachand Honors College · Keystone project
The Persuasion Equation
An agent-based model simulating the interplay of personality and message factors in political polarization — how individual-level cognitive biases add up to population-level division.
About the project
I built an agent-based model to simulate information dissemination and the evolution of political beliefs across a population, grounded in the cognitive–motivational framework of Jost et al. Agents differ in personality traits and in how they respond to messages; messages differ in framing and source. Agents are exposed to messages which may change their political beliefs, and analysis reveals whether population-level polarization emerges over time.
The project was completed as my Keystone project for the Kilachand Honors College, and presented at the annual Keystone Symposium alongside the rest of the class of 2025.