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Bad polarization in structurally cohesive communities.

Communities frequently experience belief polarization, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence supporting one side of the debate. Current explanations for this phenomenon, which we define as bad polarization, attribute its emergence to the influence of social incentives on belief format...

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Published in:Synthese Vol. 206; no. 1; pp. 1 - 31
Main Authors: Michelini, Matteo, Polizzi, Eugenia, Vilone, Daniele
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Jul2025
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        10.1007/s11229-025-04977-w
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        atl: Bad polarization in structurally cohesive communities.
      aug:
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          Michelini, Matteo
          Polizzi, Eugenia
          Vilone, Daniele
        affil:
          https://ror.org/04tsk2644 Institute for Philosophy II, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
          https://ror.org/02c2kyt77 Philosophy & Ethics Group, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
          https://ror.org/04zaypm56 LABSS (Laboratory of Agent Based Social Simulation), Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council (CNR), Rome, Italy
          https://ror.org/03ths8210 Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés, Spain
      sug:
      keyword:
        Agent-based modeling
        Bad beliefs
        Belief polarization
        Formal social epistemology
        Social incentives
        Socially adaptive beliefs
      ab: Communities frequently experience belief polarization, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence supporting one side of the debate. Current explanations for this phenomenon, which we define as bad polarization, attribute its emergence to the influence of social incentives on belief formation. However, these explanations presuppose the existence of a fragmented community in which opposing groups develop different beliefs. Here, we provide a model of belief formation in which social incentives bring about bad polarization even in structurally cohesive communities. We assume agents to distribute a finite amount of social support among their like-minded neighbors and to sample evidence partially in order to form the belief that grants them the highest possible support. Accordingly, we show that bad polarization emerges more frequently when communities are highly connected, and that bad believers, individuals holding unsupported beliefs, are consistently a minority. Bad polarization is driven by the competition for social support: bad believers form a minority because this allows them to gain a higher amount of support than if they adhered to the majority view.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
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    language: English
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