Peter Duggins | Searcharxiv

arXiv2017

A Psychologically-Motivated Model of Opinion Change with Applications to American Politics

Agent-based models are versatile tools for studying how societal opinion change, including political polarization and cultural diffusion, emerges from individual behavior. This study expands agents' psychological realism using empirically-motivated rules governing interpersonal influence, commitment to previous beliefs, and conformity in social contexts. Computational experiments establish that these extensions produce three novel results: (a) sustained strong diversity of opinions within the population, (b) opinion subcultures, and (c) pluralistic ignorance. These phenomena arise from a combination of agents' intolerance, susceptibility and conformity, with extremist agents and social networks playing important roles. The distribution and dynamics of simulated opinions reproduce two empirical datasets on Americans' political opinions.

cs.MA↗

arXiv2016

Dynamical complexity in the quantum to classical transition

We study the dynamical complexity of an open quantum driven double-well oscillator, mapping its dependence on effective Planck's constant $\hbar_{eff}\equivβ$ and coupling to the environment, $Γ$. We study this using stochastic Schrodinger equations, semiclassical equations, and the classical limit equation. We show that (i) the dynamical complexity initially increases with effective Hilbert space size (as $β$ decreases) such that the most quantum systems are the least dynamically complex. (ii) If the classical limit is chaotic, that is the most dynamically complex (iii) if the classical limit is regular, there is always a quantum system more dynamically complex than the classical system. There are several parameter regimes where the quantum system is chaotic even though the classical limit is not. While some of the quantum chaotic attractors are of the same family as the classical limiting attractors, we also find a quantum attractor with no classical counterpart. These phenomena occur in experimentally accessible regimes.

quant-ph↗