Schweighofer Simon, Garcia David, Schweitzer Frank
Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Josefstädter Str. 39, 1080 Vienna, Austria.
Chaos. 2020 Sep;30(9):093139. doi: 10.1063/5.0007523.
It is known that individual opinions on different policy issues often align to a dominant ideological dimension (e.g., left vs right) and become increasingly polarized. We provide an agent-based model that reproduces alignment and polarization as emergent properties of opinion dynamics in a multi-dimensional space of continuous opinions. The mechanisms for the change of agents' opinions in this multi-dimensional space are derived from cognitive dissonance theory and structural balance theory. We test assumptions from proximity voting and from directional voting regarding their ability to reproduce the expected emerging properties. We further study how the emotional involvement of agents, i.e., their individual resistance to change opinions, impacts the dynamics. We identify two regimes for the global and the individual alignment of opinions. If the affective involvement is high and shows a large variance across agents, this fosters the emergence of a dominant ideological dimension. Agents align their opinions along this dimension in opposite directions, i.e., create a state of polarization.
众所周知，个体在不同政策问题上的观点往往会与一个占主导地位的意识形态维度（例如，左倾与右倾）保持一致，并变得越来越两极分化。我们提供了一个基于主体的模型，该模型将一致性和两极分化作为连续观点的多维空间中观点动态的涌现属性进行再现。在这个多维空间中，主体观点变化的机制源自认知失调理论和结构平衡理论。我们检验了来自接近投票和定向投票的假设，以了解它们再现预期涌现属性的能力。我们进一步研究主体的情感参与度，即他们对改变观点的个人抵抗力，如何影响动态变化。我们确定了观点的全局和个体一致性的两种状态。如果情感参与度很高且在主体之间表现出很大差异，这将促进占主导地位的意识形态维度的出现。主体沿着这个维度以相反的方向调整他们的观点，即创造出一种两极分化的状态。
