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Discrepancy and Disliking Do Not Induce Negative Opinion Shifts

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  • Károly Takács
  • Andreas Flache
  • Michael Mäs

Abstract

Both classical social psychological theories and recent formal models of opinion differentiation and bi-polarization assign a prominent role to negative social influence. Negative influence is defined as shifts away from the opinion of others and hypothesized to be induced by discrepancy with or disliking of the source of influence. There is strong empirical support for the presence of positive social influence (a shift towards the opinion of others), but evidence that large opinion differences or disliking could trigger negative shifts is mixed. We examine positive and negative influence with controlled exposure to opinions of other individuals in one experiment and with opinion exchange in another study. Results confirm that similarities induce attraction, but results do not support that discrepancy or disliking entails negative influence. Instead, our findings suggest a robust positive linear relationship between opinion distance and opinion shifts.

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  • Károly Takács & Andreas Flache & Michael Mäs, 2016. "Discrepancy and Disliking Do Not Induce Negative Opinion Shifts," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-21, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0157948
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0157948
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    Cited by:

    1. Andreas Flache, 2018. "About Renegades And Outgroup Haters: Modeling The Link Between Social Influence And Intergroup Attitudes," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(06n07), pages 1-32, September.
    2. Weimer, Christopher W. & Miller, J.O. & Hill, Raymond R. & Hodson, Douglas D., 2022. "An opinion dynamics model of meta-contrast with continuous social influence forces," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 589(C).
    3. Simon Schweighofer & Frank Schweitzer & David Garcia, 2020. "A Weighted Balance Model of Opinion Hyperpolarization," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 23(3), pages 1-5.
    4. Carpentras, Dino & Quayle, Michael, 2022. "Propagation of measurement error in opinion dynamics models: The case of the Deffuant model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 606(C).
    5. Catherine A. Glass & David H. Glass, 2021. "Social Influence of Competing Groups and Leaders in Opinion Dynamics," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 58(3), pages 799-823, October.
    6. Thomas Feliciani & Andreas Flache & Michael Mäs, 2021. "Persuasion without polarization? Modelling persuasive argument communication in teams with strong faultlines," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 61-92, March.

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