Dynamika opinii publicznych i prywatnych jako wzajemnie oddziałujących złożonych zarażeń
[The dynamics of public and private opinions as interacting complex contagions]

Barbara Kamińska (Doctoral School - Management, KSZiRO, PWr, Wrocław)


Human decision-making and the process of opinion formation are inherently complex. This process
involves two distinct levels: the external, where opinions are openly expressed, and the internal,
where beliefs are privately held. These levels are shaped by a dynamic interplay between
independent choices, social interactions as well as their mutual impact, akin to the concept of
interacting complex contagions. Previous research, grounded in agent-based modeling, has explored
this interplay primarily by considering how publicly expressed views depend on private beliefs. In this
work, we extend this investigation to consider mutual interactions between opinions at the public
and private levels. The main objective of this study is to assess the impact of self-confirmation and
the desire to reduce cognitive dissonance, the misalignment between internal and external opinions.
This also means exclusion of self-anticonformity, a factor present in our previous work. Through
Monte Carlo simulations and analytical analysis, we demonstrate that a model without self-
anticonformity supports the emergence of social hysteresis, a form of collective memory closely
linked to delays in responding to changing external conditions. The results obtained in this work
show also that self-anticonformity can foster agreement among agents, aligning with similar results
from various other models.