Ramos Marlon, Shao Jia, Reis Saulo D S, Anteneodo Celia, Andrade José S, Havlin Shlomo, Makse Hernán A
1] Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA [2] Departamento de Física, PUC-Rio, 22451-900, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [3] CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Ministério da Educação, 70040-020, Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil.
Bloomberg LP, New York, NY 10022, USA.
Sci Rep. 2015 May 19;5:10032. doi: 10.1038/srep10032.
We investigate the emergence of extreme opinion trends in society by employing statistical physics modeling and analysis on polls that inquire about a wide range of issues such as religion, economics, politics, abortion, extramarital sex, books, movies, and electoral vote. The surveys lay out a clear indicator of the rise of extreme views. The precursor is a nonlinear relation between the fraction of individuals holding a certain extreme view and the fraction of individuals that includes also moderates, e.g., in politics, those who are "very conservative" versus "moderate to very conservative" ones. We propose an activation model of opinion dynamics with interaction rules based on the existence of individual "stubbornness" that mimics empirical observations. According to our modeling, the onset of nonlinearity can be associated to an abrupt bootstrap-percolation transition with cascades of extreme views through society. Therefore, it represents an early-warning signal to forecast the transition from moderate to extreme views. Moreover, by means of a phase diagram we can classify societies according to the percolative regime they belong to, in terms of critical fractions of extremists and people's ties.
我们通过对民意调查采用统计物理建模和分析来研究社会中极端观点趋势的出现，这些民意调查涉及宗教、经济、政治、堕胎、婚外性行为、书籍、电影和选举投票等广泛问题。这些调查清楚地表明了极端观点的上升。其先兆是持有某种极端观点的个体比例与包括温和派在内的个体比例之间的非线性关系，例如在政治方面，“非常保守”的人与“温和到非常保守”的人。我们基于个体“固执”的存在提出了一种具有相互作用规则的观点动态激活模型，该模型模仿了实证观察结果。根据我们的模型，非线性的出现可能与通过社会的极端观点级联的突然自引导渗流转变有关。因此，它代表了预测从温和观点向极端观点转变的早期预警信号。此外，通过相图，我们可以根据社会所属的渗流状态，依据极端分子的临界比例和人们的联系对社会进行分类。
