Dresden 2020 – scientific programme
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 13: Focus Session: Opinion Formation
SOE 13.5: Talk
Thursday, March 19, 2020, 10:30–10:45, GÖR 226
Repulsion drives public opinion into fifty-fifty stalemate — •Sebastian M. Krause1, Fritz Weyhausen-Brinkmann2, and Stefan Bornholdt2 — 1University of Duisburg-Essen, Lotharstr. 1, 47048 Duisburg — 2University of Bremen, Otto-Hahn-Allee, 28359 Bremen
The public opinion is often trapped in a fifty-fifty stalemate, especially in controversial debates. This jeopardizes broadly accepted political decisions. Here we demonstrate that fifty-fifty stalemates are favored in case of strong repulsion from opinions [1]. We study a voter model with two opinions and an undecided state in between. In pairwise discussions, undecided agents can be not only convinced, but also repelled from the opinion expressed by another agent, and decided agents may doubt and return to the undecided state. We find that the frequencies of both opinions equalize if an agent is repelled instead of being convinced in at least one out of four interactions, as in controversial debates. This voter model attractor reproduces the phenomenology of repeated Brexit poll data well.
[1] S.M. Krause, F. Weyhausen-Brinkmann, S. Bornholdt, Repulsion in controversial debate drives public opinion into fifty-fifty stalemate, PRE 100 (2019) 042307.