THE IMPORTANCE OF DISAGREEING: CONTRARIANS AND EXTREMISM IN THE CODA MODEL

Abstract

In this paper, we study the effects of introducing contrarians in a model of Opinion Dynamics where the agents have internal continuous opinions, but exchange information only about a binary choice that is a function of their continuous opinion, the CODA model. We observe that the hung election scenario that arises when contrarians are introduced in discrete opinion models still happens. However, it is weaker and it should not be expected in every election. Finally, we also show that the introduction of contrarians make the tendency towards extremism of the original model weaker, indicating that the existence of agents that prefer to disagree might be an important aspect and help society to diminish extremist opinions.