Studying the emotions which cause opinions to change

Physicists can use their tools to help understand how, in real life, opinions form and change

2013-07-31

(Press-News.org) Social phenomena fascinate with their complexity, but are not easily understood. Pawel Sobkowicz, an independent researcher based in Warsaw, Poland, has developed a model to study the dynamics of normal people, called 'agents', and their response to a given piece of information, depending on their emotional state. In a study about to be published in EPJ B, the author shows that opinion dynamics differ depending on whether the agent is agitated or not.

Key social questions of interest have been the object of previous studies using physics tools. The field of magnetic interactions has previously been used to compare opinions to a degree of freedom associated with atoms, called spin. Global average opinion is associated with overall magnetisation of the material, whereas sudden opinion shifts compare to magnetic materials phase transitions.

However, describing opinion change is not as simple as a spin flip of an atom. Therefore, unlike previous work, this study attempts to combine, on the single agent level, the complex interactions between information and emotions, albeit representing an approach still far from the actual complexity of the human psyche. Nevertheless, it allows modelling of opinion change or freezing of opinion, should the agent be subjected to an emotional response.

The premise for this study was to consider that a given agent opinion about a particular issue is determined by both its information about the issue and its subsequent emotional response. The author assumes the possibility of the same information leading to different opinions when agents are agitated. This results in individual opinion dynamics.

The author's findings, relevant to a simplified social environment, are directly comparable with social observations. These include the stability of minority groups surrounded by enemies and the fact that so many elections have results close to the 50/50 ratio.

### Reference P. Sobkowicz (2013), Minority persistence in agent based model using information and emotional arousal as control variables. European Physical Journal B, DOI 10.1140/epjb/e2013-40029-0.

For more information visit: http://www.epj.org

The full-text article is available to journalists on request.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New protein discovered with vast potential for treatment of cancer and other diseases

2013-07-31

In cancer research, discovering a new protein that plays a role in cancer is like finding a key and a treasure map: follow the clues and eventually there could be a big reward. At least that's the hope from a new study published in the journal Nature that discovered a novel protein called ceramide-1 phosphate transport protein (CPTP) -- a finding that could eventually lead to the development of new drugs to treat a variety of cancers and other conditions involving inflammation and thrombosis, or blood clotting. The identification of CPTP was the result of an international ...

UT Austin researchers successfully spoof an $80 million yacht at sea

2013-07-31

AUSTIN, Texas — This summer, a radio navigation research team from The University of Texas at Austin set out to discover whether they could subtly coerce a 213-foot yacht off its course, using a custom-made GPS device. Led by assistant professor Todd Humphreys of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the Cockrell School of Engineering, the team was able to successfully spoof an $80 million private yacht using the world's first openly acknowledged GPS spoofing device. Spoofing is a technique that creates false civil GPS signals to gain control ...

Georgia Tech uncovers iOS security weaknesses

2013-07-31

Researchers from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) have discovered two security weaknesses that permit installation of malware onto Apple mobile devices using seemingly innocuous applications and peripherals, uncovering significant security threats to the iOS platform. "Apple utilizes a mandatory app review process to ensure that only approved apps can run on iOS devices, which allows users to feel safe when using any iOS app," said GTISC Associate Director Paul Royal, also a research scientist in the College of Computing. "However, we have discovered ...

Sediment trapped behind dams makes them 'hot spots' for greenhouse gas emissions

2013-07-31

With the "green" reputation of large hydroelectric dams already in question, scientists are reporting that millions of smaller dams on rivers around the world make an important contribution to the greenhouse gases linked to global climate change. Their study, showing that more methane than previously believed bubbles out of the water behind small dams, appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. Andreas Maeck and colleagues point out that the large reservoirs of water behind the world's 50,000 large dams are a known source of methane. Like carbon dioxide, ...

Study offers promising new direction for organ regeneration and tissue repair

2013-07-31

BOSTON – Because most human tissues do not regenerate spontaneously, advances in tissue repair and organ regeneration could benefit many patients with a wide variety of medical conditions. Now a research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center has identified an entirely new approach to enhance normal tissue growth, a finding that could have widespread therapeutic applications. Their findings were published on-line this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy ...

Chemical company giants stall with global economy

2013-07-31

The world's 50 largest chemical companies — with combined 2012 sales of almost $1 trillion and products that touch the lives of people everywhere — are the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. In C&EN's annual snapshot of the sales, profits, R&D spending and other indicators, Senior Correspondent Alexander Tullo points out that the Asian and Middle Eastern juggernauts that shot up the top 50 rankings during the past decade ...

New poll shows minority populations support clinical trials to improve health of others

2013-07-31

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—July 31, 2013—Altruism is a strong motivating factor for clinical trial participation in the general population and even more so among several minority groups. A significant percentage of African-Americans (61%), Hispanics (57%) and Asians (50%) say it's very important to participate as a volunteer in a clinical trial to improve the health of others, compared to 47% of non-Hispanic whites, according to a new national public opinion poll commissioned by Research!America. These findings are tempered by the reality that participation remains disturbingly ...

3-D molecular syringes

2013-07-31

This news release is available in German. Abdominal pain, fever, diarrhoea -- these symptoms could point to an infection with the bacterium Yersinia. The bacterium's pathogenic potential is based on a syringe-like injection apparatus called injectisome. For the first time, an international team of researchers including scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany, has unraveled this molecular syringe's spatial conformation. The researchers were able to demonstrate that the length of Yersinia's injectisome's basal body, which ...

VCU physicists discover theoretical possibility of large, hollow magnetic cage molecules

2013-07-31

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have discovered, in theory, the possibility of creating large, hollow magnetic cage molecules that could one day be used in medicine as a drug delivery system to non-invasively treat tumors, and in other emerging technologies. Approximately 25 years ago, scientists first made the discovery of C60 fullerene – better known as the Buckminster Fullerene – a molecule composed of 60 carbon molecules that formed a hollow cage. Due to its unique hollow cage structure the molecule offers serious technological potential because it could ...

Tiny, brightly shining silicon crystals could be safe for deep-tissue imaging

2013-07-31

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Tiny silicon crystals caused no health problems in monkeys three months after large doses were injected, marking a step forward in the quest to bring such materials into clinics as biomedical imaging agents, according to a new study. The findings, published online July 10 in the journal ACS Nano, suggest that the silicon nanocrystals, known as quantum dots, may be a safe tool for diagnostic imaging in humans. The nanocrystals absorb and emit light in the near-infrared part of the spectrum, a quality that makes them ideal for seeing deeper into tissue ...

Studying the emotions which cause opinions to change

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: