Impact of cognitive dissonance on social hysteresis: Insights from the expressed and private opinions model

The growing interest in models of opinion dynamics that distinguish between private beliefs and publicly expressed opinions spans several academic disciplines, ranging from the social sciences to the hard sciences. These models have been developed to study decision-making processes and have been applied to a variety of social phenomena, such as pluralistic ignorance, the spiral of silence, and preference falsification. However, a significant gap exists in understanding social hysteresis – a concept essential for explaining the delayed societal responses to rapid changes in the modern world. This research addresses this gap by examining the impact of cognitive dissonance on social hysteresis using an updated model of expressed and private opinions (EPOs). We propose that, from a modeling perspective, reducing cognitive dissonance can be reframed as avoiding self-anticonformity, which enables us to draw on recent psychological experiments on strategic anticonformity. The model is analyzed both analytically and through Monte Carlo simulations. To promote accessibility and reproducibility, we have made the specialized NetLogo implementation of the model publicly available on GitHub. Additionally, we provide a concise review of existing EPOs models to contextualize our approach. By incorporating a cognitive dissonance mitigation mechanism into an agent-based $q$-voter-type model of EPOs, we demonstrate that this mechanism induces social hysteresis. Consequently, we argue that refraining from rationalizing publicly expressed opinions could mitigate social hysteresis and facilitate consensus, offering insights into potential strategies for managing societal responses to change.