Faculty of Physics, University of Duisburg-Essen, 47057 Duisburg, Germany.
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Bremen, 28539 Bremen, Germany.
Phys Rev E. 2019 Oct;100(4-1):042307. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.100.042307.
Opinion formation is a process with strong implications for public policy. In controversial debates with large consequences, the public opinion is often trapped in a fifty-fifty stalemate, jeopardizing broadly accepted political decisions. Emergent effects from millions of private discussions make it hard to understand or influence this kind of opinion dynamics. Here we demonstrate that repulsion from opinions favors fifty-fifty stalemates. We study a voter model where agents can have two opinions or an undecided state in between, and where we allow for repulsion of opinions and for doubt: in pairwise discussions, undecided agents can be not only convinced, but also repelled from the opinion expressed by another agent, and decided agents may return to the undecided state. As a result, we observe that, if an agent is repelled instead of being convinced in at least one out of four interactions, as in controversial debates, the frequencies of both opinions equalize. This voter model attractor reproduces the phenomenology of repeated Brexit poll data well and provides a mechanism solely based on local interactions between agents that may explain stalemate polarization in controversial opinion formation.
观点形成是一个对公共政策有深远影响的过程。在具有重大后果的争议性辩论中，公众意见往往陷入僵持不下的局面，危及广泛接受的政治决策。来自数百万次私人讨论的涌现效应使得理解或影响这种舆论动态变得困难。在这里，我们证明了对意见的排斥有利于僵持不下的局面。我们研究了一个投票者模型，其中代理可以有两种意见或两者之间的未决定状态，并且我们允许意见的排斥和怀疑：在成对的讨论中，未决定的代理不仅可以被说服，还可以被另一个代理表达的意见所排斥，而决定的代理可能会回到未决定的状态。结果，我们观察到，如果代理在至少四分之一的交互中被排斥而不是被说服，就像在有争议的辩论中一样，两种意见的频率会相等。这个投票者模型吸引子很好地再现了反复出现的英国脱欧民意调查数据的现象学，并提供了一种仅基于代理之间的局部相互作用的机制，该机制可能解释了有争议的观点形成中的僵持极化现象。
