Symmetry breaking by heating in a continuous opinion model

Abstract

We study the critical behavior of a continuous opinion model, driven by kinetic exchanges in a fully connected population. Opinions range in the real interval [-1,1], representing the different shades of opinions against and for an issue under debate. Individuals' opinions evolve through pairwise interactions, with couplings that are typically positive, but a fraction p of negative ones is allowed. Moreover, a social temperature parameter T controls the tendency of the individual responses toward neutrality. Depending on p and T, different collective states emerge: symmetry broken (one side wins), symmetric (tie of opposite sides), and absorbing neutral (indecision wins). We find the critical points and exponents that characterize the phase transitions between them. The symmetry breaking transition belongs to the usual Ising mean-field universality class, but the absorbing-phase transitions, with β=0.5, are out of the paradigmatic directed percolation class. Moreover, ordered phases can emerge by increasing social temperature.

Three-state opinion dynamics in modular networks

“…We found that the system exhibits order-disorder transitions, and for some values of the parameters h and p such transition can be discontinuous. In addition, we also found a disorder-induced transition for increasing h for a wide range of values of the disorder parameter p. This is not a usual result in models of opinion dynamics, but it was recently observed in a model of continuous opinions [20] and for a q-voter model [51]. Our results also show that the introduction of intergroup bias is capable of promoting the polarization of opinions.…”

“…A similar nonmonotonic ordering was found in a continuous model of opinion dynamics [20] and also in a q-voter model with independence and memory [51]. Our work adds a novel mechanism for the emergence of nonmonotonic phenomena in social scenarios: the combination of community structure and negative intergroup interactions in three-state opinion dynamics.…”

Emergence of moderate opinions as a consequence of group pressure

“…We consider a fully-connected population wit N agents or individuals. Each individual i carries an opinion o i , given by a continuous variable in the real range [−1, 1], in order to represent the possible shades of individuals attitudes against or for the topic under discussion 25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37 . Opinions tending to o = ±1 indicate extremist individuals, while opinions o ≈ 0 mean neutral or undecided ones.…”

Multi-choice opinion dynamics model based on Latané theory

“…The models of opinions dynamics deals with binary (or Boolean), Ising-like [18] variables, corresponding to two-states models of opinions [19][20][21][22] or multi-state, but still discrete state opinions models [6,23] or discrete vector-like variables [7]. The second group of models deals with continuous opinions [11,13,14,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32].…”