Emergence of Polarized Ideological Opinions in Multidimensional Topic Spaces

Autor(es)

Baumann, Fabian ^[1] ; Lorenz-Spreen, Philipp ^[2] ; Sokolov, Igor M. ^{[1, 3]} ; Starnini, Michele ^[4]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Humboldt Univ, Inst Phys, Newtonstr 15, D-12489 Berlin - Germany

^[2] Max Planck Inst Human Dev, Ctr Adapt Rational, Lentzeallee 94, D-14195 Berlin - Germany

^[3] Humboldt Univ, IRIS Adlershof, Zum Grossen Windkanal 6, D-12489 Berlin - Germany

^[4] ISI Fdn, Via Chisola 5, I-10126 Turin - Italy

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: PHYSICAL REVIEW X; v. 11, n. 1 JAN 20 2021.
• Citações Web of Science: 0

Resumo

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 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 nonorthogonal 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 opinions to be correlated. Our findings shed light upon the mechanisms driving the emergence of ideology in the formation of opinions. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 15/50122-0 - Fenômenos dinâmicos em redes complexas: fundamentos e aplicações
• Beneficiário: Elbert Einstein Nehrer Macau
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Temático