Individual attitude change and societal dynamics: Computational experiments with psychological theories.

Abstract

We present an agent-based model for studying the societal implications of attitude change theories. Various psychological theories of persuasive communication at the individual level are implemented as simulation experiments. The model allows us to investigate the effects of contagion and assimilation, motivated cognition, polarity, source credibility, and idiosyncratic attitude formation. Simulations show that different theories produce different characteristic macrolevel patterns. Contagion and assimilation are central mechanisms for generating consensus, however, contagion generates a radicalized consensus. Motivated cognition causes societal polarization or the fragmentation of attitudes. Polarity and source credibility have comparatively little effect on the societal distribution of attitudes. We discuss how the simulations provide a bridge between microlevel psychological theories and the aggregated macrolevel studied by sociology. This approach enables new types of evidence for evaluating psychological theory to complement experimental approaches, thus answering calls to enhance the role of coherent and formalized theory in psychological science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).