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Abstract
We present results of an abstract, agent based model of opinion dynamics simulations based on the emotion/information/opinion (E/I/O) approach, applied to a strongly polarized society, corresponding to the Polish political scene between 2005 and 2015. Under certain conditions the model leads to metastable coexistence of two subcommunities of comparable size (supporting the corresponding opinions)—which corresponds to the bipartisan split found in Poland. Spurred by the recent breakdown of this political duopoly, which occurred in 2015, we present a model extension that describes both the long term coexistence of the two opposing opinions and a rapid, transitory change due to the appearance of a third party alternative. We provide quantitative comparison of the model with the results of polls and elections in Poland, testing the assumptions related to the modeled processes and the parameters used in the simulations. It is shown, that when the propaganda messages of the two incumbent parties differ in emotional tone, the political status quo may be unstable. The asymmetry of the emotions within the support bases of the two parties allows one of them to be ‘invaded’ by a newcomer third party very quickly, while the second remains immune to such invasion.
Highlights
The changes of collective political opinions resulting from individual interactions between people and from external influences of persuasion efforts of various interested parties and organizations are part of the core of topics of sociology
More than 150 years ago, Auguste Comte [1] imagined social physics as that science which occupies itself with social phenomena, considered in the same light as astronomical, physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena, that is to say as being subject to natural and invariable laws of discovery of which is the special object of its researches
We must remember that the quality of any simulation in reproducing real world data crucially depends on the ability to determine the proper input parameters, and the more errors are inherent in this choice, the more difficult is to check if ‘this is the right combination of parameters’, corresponding to the studied social system. In this situation we propose a simplified discrete model that includes the key property of the cusp catastrophe, that is the possibility that for certain emotional states it is possible for the agents to hold conflicting opinions despite the fact that they share the same information about the issue
Summary
The changes of collective political opinions resulting from individual interactions between people and from external influences of persuasion efforts of various interested parties and organizations are part of the core of topics of sociology. One can mention the voter model [4,5,6,7], the Sznajd model [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15], the bounded confidence model [16,17,18,19,20,21], the Hegelsmann-Krause model [22], the social impact model of Nowak-Latané [23, 24] and its further modifications [25,26,27,28] These sociophysical models have resulted in considerable advance in the understanding of some common, universal mechanisms of social opinion change, using statistical treatment of the interactions between large numbers of people. The last section provides a discussion of the results and some considerations related to possible further applications of the model
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