It is known that individual opinions on different policy issues often align
to a dominant ideological dimension (e.g. "left" vs. "right") and become
increasingly polarized. We provide an agent-based model that reproduces these
two stylized facts as emergent properties of an opinion dynamics in a
multi-dimensional space of continuous opinions. The mechanisms for the change
of agents' opinions in this multi-dimensional space are derived from cognitive
dissonance theory and structural balance theory. We test assumptions from
proximity voting and from directional voting regarding their ability to
reproduce the expected emerging properties. We further study how the emotional
involvement of agents, i.e. their individual resistance to change opinions,
impacts the dynamics. We identify two regimes for the global and the individual
alignment of opinions. If the affective involvement is high and shows a large
variance across agents, this fosters the emergence of a dominant ideological
dimension. Agents align their opinions along this dimension in opposite
directions, i.e. create a state of polarization.

通过代理模型，揭示了有关多维空间中观点动态的两个特征：人们的各种政策问题的个人意见往往与主导意识形态维度（例如 “左” 与 “右”）保持一致，并且越来越极端。

多维观点动态和观点一致性的基于代理人模型

An agent-based model of multi-dimensional opinion dynamics and opinion  alignment

Relations between users on social media sites often reflect a mixture of
positive (friendly) and negative (antagonistic) interactions. In contrast to
the bulk of research on social networks that has focused almost exclusively on
positive interpretations of links between people, we study how the interplay
between positive and negative relationships affects the structure of on-line
social networks. We connect our analyses to theories of signed networks from
social psychology. We find that the classical theory of structural balance
tends to capture certain common patterns of interaction, but that it is also at
odds with some of the fundamental phenomena we observe --- particularly related
to the evolving, directed nature of these on-line networks. We then develop an
alternate theory of status that better explains the observed edge signs and
provides insights into the underlying social mechanisms. Our work provides one
of the first large-scale evaluations of theories of signed networks using
on-line datasets, as well as providing a perspective for reasoning about social
media sites.

研究在线社交网络中的正负关系，发现结构平衡理论有时难以解释网络的演变，提出了状态理论来更好地说明观察到的边缘符号并提供了有关潜在社会机制的见解。