Democratic Thwarting of Majority Rule in Opinion Dynamics: 1. Unavowed Prejudices Versus Contrarians.

Abstract

I study the conditions under which the democratic dynamics of a public debate drives a minority-to-majority transition. A landscape of the opinion dynamics is thus built using the Galam Majority Model (GMM) in a 3-dimensional parameter space for three different sizes, r=2,3,4, of local discussion groups. The related parameters are (p0,k,x), the respective proportions of initial agents supporting opinion A, unavowed tie prejudices breaking in favor of opinion A, and contrarians. Combining k and x yields unexpected and counterintuitive results. In most of the landscape the final outcome is predetermined, with a single-attractor dynamics, independent of the initial support for the competing opinions. Large domains of (k,x) values are found to lead an initial minority to turn into a majority democratically without any external influence. A new alternating regime is also unveiled in narrow ranges of extreme proportions of contrarians. The findings indicate that the expected democratic character of free opinion dynamics is indeed rarely satisfied. The actual values of (k,x) are found to be instrumental to predetermining the final winning opinion independently of p0. Therefore, the conflicting challenge for the predetermined opinion to lose is to modify these values appropriately to become the winner. However, developing a model which could help in manipulating public opinion raises ethical questions. This issue is discussed in the Conclusions.