The influence of contrarians in the dynamics of opinion formation

Abstract: In this work we consider the presence of contrarian agents in discrete 3-state kinetic exchange opinion models. The contrarians are individuals that adopt the choice opposite to the prevailing choice of their contacts, whatever this choice is. We consider binary as well as three-agent interactions, with stochastic parameters, in a fully-connected population. Our numerical results suggest that the presence of contrarians destroys the absorbing state of the original model, changing the transition to the para-ferromagnetic type. In this case, the consequence for the society is that the three opinions coexist in the population, in both phases (ordered and disordered). Furthermore, the order-disorder transition is suppressed for a sufficient large fraction of contrarians. In some cases the transition is discontinuous, and it changes to continuous before it is suppressed. Some of our results are complemented by analytical calculations based on the master equation.