Paths to Polarization: How Extreme Views, Miscommunication, and Random Chance Drive Opinion Dynamics

Figure 13

Noisy communication causes extremism without polarization before it causes extremism with polarization. For all pictured, the average distance from center increases with moderate levels of noise, even though polarization has not increased, as shown in Figure 11. The value in each square of the heat map is the average of 100 trials.