An Argument Communication Model of Polarization and Ideological Alignment

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-level opinion formation model that explains how biased interactions and cognitive structures lead to polarization and ideological alignment across multiple issues.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-level model incorporating cognitive associations and biased interactions to explain polarization and issue alignment.

Findings

Bias in agent interactions causes belief polarization.

The model accounts for cross-issue ideological alignment.

It extends previous models by including issue interdependence.

Abstract

A multi-level model of opinion formation is presented which takes into account that attitudes on different issues are usually not independent. In the model, agents exchange beliefs regarding a series of facts. A cognitive structure of evaluative associations links different (partially overlapping) sets of facts to different political issues and determines an agents' attitudinal positions in a way borrowed from expectancy value theory. If agents preferentially interact with other agents that hold similar attitudes on one or several issues, this leads to biased argument pools and polarization in the sense that groups of agents selectively belief in distinct subsets of facts. Besides the emergence of a bi-modal distribution of opinions on single issues that most previous opinion polarization models address, our model also accounts for the alignment of attitudes across several issues along ideological dimensions.