TY - JOUR A2 - Cimini, Giulio AU - Schweitzer, Frank AU - Krivachy, Tamas AU - Garcia, David PY - 2020 DA - 2020/04/10 TI - An Agent-Based Model of Opinion Polarization Driven by Emotions SP - 5282035 VL - 2020 AB - We provide an agent-based model to explain the emergence of collective opinions not based on feedback between different opinions, but based on emotional interactions between agents. The driving variable is the emotional state of agents, characterized by their valence, quantifying the emotion from unpleasant to pleasant, and their arousal, quantifying the degree of activity associated with the emotion. Both determine their emotional expression, from which collective emotional information is generated. This information feeds back on the dynamics of emotional states and individual opinions in a nonlinear manner. We derive the critical conditions for emotional interactions to obtain either consensus or polarization of opinions. Stochastic agent-based simulations and formal analyses of the model explain our results. Possible ways to validate the model are discussed. SN - 1076-2787 UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/5282035 DO - 10.1155/2020/5282035 JF - Complexity PB - Hindawi KW - ER -