Balancer effects in opinion dynamics

We introduce a novel type of contrarian agent, the balancer, to the Galam model of opinion dynamics, which features group-majority update, in order to account for the existence of social skepticism over one-sidedness. We find that, along with majoritarian floaters and single-sided inflexibles, the inclusion of balancers, who normally act as floaters but oppose inflexibles in their presence, brings about the emergence of a critical point on parametric plane of the dynamical system. Around the critical point, three distinct phases of opinion dynamics separated by discontinuous changes are found. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.