291 research outputs found
About renegades and outgroup-haters: Modelling the link between social influence and intergroup attitudes
Polarization between groups is a major topic of contemporary societal debate
as well as of research into intergroup relations. Formal modelers of opinion
dynamics try to explain how intergroup polarization can arise from simple first
principles of interactions within and between groups. Models have been proposed
in which intergroup attitudes affect social influence in the form of homophily
or xenophobia, elaborated as fixed tendencies of individuals to interact more
with in-group members, be more open to influence from in-group members and
perhaps even distance oneself from attitudes of outgroup members. While these
models can generate polarization between groups, their underlying assumptions
curiously neglect a central insight from research on intergroup attitudes.
Intergroup attitudes are themselves subject to social influence in interactions
with both in- and outgroup members. I extend an existing model of opinion
formation with intergroup attitudes, by adding this feedback-effect. I show how
this changes model predictions about the process and the conditions of
polarization between groups. In particular, it is demonstrated how the model
implies that intergroup polarization can become less likely if intergroup
attitudes change under social influence; and how more complex patterns of
intergroup relations emerge. Especially, a renegade minority (outgroup-lovers)
can have a key role in avoiding mutually negative intergroup relations and even
elicit attitude reversal, resulting in a majority of individuals developing a
negative attitude towards their in-group and a positive one of the outgroup.
Interpretations of these theoretical results and directions for future research
are further discussed.Comment: 33 pages, 21 figures, Paper presented at ODCD 2017. Interdisciplinary
Workshop on Opinion Dynamics and Collective Decision 2017, July 5-7, 2017 @
Jacobs University Bremen, German
Adoption as a Social Marker: Innovation Diffusion with Outgroup Aversion
Social identities are among the key factors driving behavior in complex
societies. Signals of social identity are known to influence individual
behaviors in the adoption of innovations. Yet the population-level consequences
of identity signaling on the diffusion of innovations are largely unknown. Here
we use both analytical and agent-based modeling to consider the spread of a
beneficial innovation in a structured population in which there exist two
groups who are averse to being mistaken for each other. We investigate the
dynamics of adoption and consider the role of structural factors such as
demographic skew and communication scale on population-level outcomes. We find
that outgroup aversion can lead to adoption being delayed or suppressed in one
group, and that population-wide underadoption is common. Comparing the two
models, we find that differential adoption can arise due to structural
constraints on information flow even in the absence of intrinsic between-group
differences in adoption rates. Further, we find that patterns of polarization
in adoption at both local and global scales depend on the details of
demographic organization and the scale of communication. This research has
particular relevance to widely beneficial but identity-relevant products and
behaviors, such as green technologies, where overall levels of adoption
determine the positive benefits that accrue to society at large.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure
Emergence of polarized ideological opinions in multidimensional topic spaces
Opinion polarization is on the rise, causing concerns for the openness of
public debates. Additionally, extreme opinions on different topics often show
significant correlations. The dynamics leading to these polarized ideological
opinions pose a challenge: How can such correlations emerge, without assuming
them a priori in the individual preferences or in a preexisting social
structure? Here we propose a simple model that qualitatively reproduces
ideological opinion states found in survey data, even between rather unrelated,
but sufficiently controversial, topics. Inspired by skew coordinate systems
recently proposed in natural language processing models, we solidify these
intuitions in a formalism of opinions unfolding in a multidimensional space
where topics form a non-orthogonal basis. Opinions evolve according to the
social interactions among the agents, which are ruled by homophily: two agents
sharing similar opinions are more likely to interact. The model features phase
transitions between a global consensus, opinion polarization, and ideological
states. Interestingly, the ideological phase emerges by relaxing the assumption
of an orthogonal basis of the topic space, i.e. if topics thematically overlap.
Furthermore, we analytically and numerically show that these transitions are
driven by the controversialness of the topics discussed, the more controversial
the topics, the more likely are opinion to be correlated. Our findings shed
light upon the mechanisms driving the emergence of ideology in the formation of
opinions.Comment: 30 pages, 21 figure
Scientific Polarization
Contemporary societies are often "polarized", in the sense that sub-groups
within these societies hold stably opposing beliefs, even when there is a fact
of the matter. Extant models of polarization do not capture the idea that some
beliefs are true and others false. Here we present a model, based on the
network epistemology framework of Bala and Goyal ["Learning from neighbors",
\textit{Rev. Econ. Stud.} \textbf{65}(3), 784-811 (1998)], in which
polarization emerges even though agents gather evidence about their beliefs,
and true belief yields a pay-off advantage. The key mechanism that generates
polarization involves treating evidence generated by other agents as uncertain
when their beliefs are relatively different from one's own.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, author final versio
Adherence to Misinformation on Social Media Through Socio-Cognitive and Group-Based Processes
Previous work suggests that people's preference for different kinds of
information depends on more than just accuracy. This could happen because the
messages contained within different pieces of information may either be
well-liked or repulsive. Whereas factual information must often convey
uncomfortable truths, misinformation can have little regard for veracity and
leverage psychological processes which increase its attractiveness and
proliferation on social media. In this review, we argue that when
misinformation proliferates, this happens because the social media environment
enables adherence to misinformation by reducing, rather than increasing, the
psychological cost of doing so. We cover how attention may often be shifted
away from accuracy and towards other goals, how social and individual cognition
is affected by misinformation and the cases under which debunking it is most
effective, and how the formation of online groups affects information
consumption patterns, often leading to more polarization and radicalization.
Throughout, we make the case that polarization and misinformation adherence are
closely tied. We identify ways in which the psychological cost of adhering to
misinformation can be increased when designing anti-misinformation
interventions or resilient affordances, and we outline open research questions
that the CSCW community can take up in further understanding this cost
The Role of Scientific Evidence in Canada\u27s West Coast Energy Conflicts
With salience, credibility, and legitimacy as organizing themes, we investigated how opposing communities engaged with scientific information for two contentious proposed energy projects in western Canada, and how their perceptions of science influenced its use in decision-making. The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, to carry diluted bitumen from northern Alberta’s oil sands to tankers on British Columbia’s (BC) south coast, was expected to adversely impact biodiversity and contribute to climate change. The Bute Inlet hydroelectric project, a large renewable energy project planned for BC’s Central Coast, was anticipated to impact biodiversity but was largely seen as climate-friendly. Based on surveys and interviews with 68 participants who had made one or more personal or professional decisions pertaining to the projects, we discovered that values, cultural cognition, and media effects permeated all aspects of using scientific evidence—from commissioning scientific research to selecting, assessing, and weighing it with other forms of information. As a result, science was developed and used to support positions rather than to inform decisions. We discuss ways to improve the use of science in environmental assessments and other planning and development processes where engaged communities are divided by oppositional positions. We hope this research will lead to community-university partnerships that identify broadly salient, credible, and legitimate sources of information about energy and climate issues, and foster knowledge mobilization across conflict divides
Opinion dynamics: models, extensions and external effects
Recently, social phenomena have received a lot of attention not only from
social scientists, but also from physicists, mathematicians and computer
scientists, in the emerging interdisciplinary field of complex system science.
Opinion dynamics is one of the processes studied, since opinions are the
drivers of human behaviour, and play a crucial role in many global challenges
that our complex world and societies are facing: global financial crises,
global pandemics, growth of cities, urbanisation and migration patterns, and
last but not least important, climate change and environmental sustainability
and protection. Opinion formation is a complex process affected by the
interplay of different elements, including the individual predisposition, the
influence of positive and negative peer interaction (social networks playing a
crucial role in this respect), the information each individual is exposed to,
and many others. Several models inspired from those in use in physics have been
developed to encompass many of these elements, and to allow for the
identification of the mechanisms involved in the opinion formation process and
the understanding of their role, with the practical aim of simulating opinion
formation and spreading under various conditions. These modelling schemes range
from binary simple models such as the voter model, to multi-dimensional
continuous approaches. Here, we provide a review of recent methods, focusing on
models employing both peer interaction and external information, and
emphasising the role that less studied mechanisms, such as disagreement, has in
driving the opinion dynamics. [...]Comment: 42 pages, 6 figure
Novel Multidimensional Models of Opinion Dynamics in Social Networks
Unlike many complex networks studied in the literature, social networks
rarely exhibit unanimous behavior, or consensus. This requires a development of
mathematical models that are sufficiently simple to be examined and capture, at
the same time, the complex behavior of real social groups, where opinions and
actions related to them may form clusters of different size. One such model,
proposed by Friedkin and Johnsen, extends the idea of conventional consensus
algorithm (also referred to as the iterative opinion pooling) to take into
account the actors' prejudices, caused by some exogenous factors and leading to
disagreement in the final opinions.
In this paper, we offer a novel multidimensional extension, describing the
evolution of the agents' opinions on several topics. Unlike the existing
models, these topics are interdependent, and hence the opinions being formed on
these topics are also mutually dependent. We rigorous examine stability
properties of the proposed model, in particular, convergence of the agents'
opinions. Although our model assumes synchronous communication among the
agents, we show that the same final opinions may be reached "on average" via
asynchronous gossip-based protocols.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transaction on Automatic Control (to be published in
May 2017
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