From anti-conformism to extremism

TL;DR

This paper presents a model of opinion dynamics showing how anti-conformist agents can influence large populations to adopt extremist views, especially when conformists are uncertain and anti-conformists are more vocal.

Contribution

The study introduces a model combining bounded confidence and anti-conformism to explain the emergence of extremism in large populations, highlighting key influencing parameters.

Findings

Anti-conformists can sway many conformists if they express views more frequently.

Higher conformist uncertainty increases anti-conformist influence.

Two regime transitions depend on conformist uncertainty and anti-conformism strength.

Abstract

We here present a model of the dynamics of extremism based on opinion dynamics in order to understand the circumstances which favour its emergence and development in large fractions of the general public. Our model is based on the bounded confidence hypothesis and on the evolution of initially anti-conformist agents to extreme positions. Numerical analyses demonstrate that a few anti-conformists are able to drag a large fraction of conformists agents to their position provided that they express their views more often than the conformists. The most influential parameter controlling the outcome of the dynamics is the uncertainty of the conformist agents; the higher their uncertainty, the higher is the influence of anti-conformists. Systematic scans of the parameter space show the existence of two regime transitions, one following the conformists uncertainty parameter and the other one following the anti-conformism strength.