How Availability Heuristic, Confirmation Bias and Fear May Drive Societal Polarisation: An Opinion Dynamics Simulation of the Case of COVID-19 Vaccination
Teng Li,
Wander Jager
Abstract:The stark contrast between different opinions on COVID-19 vaccination suggests that the underlying opinion dynamics is a topic worth studying. Here we build a comprehensive agent-based model by incorporating fear into the HUMAT framework to study how the availability heuristic and confirmation bias influence information processing and impact the opinion dynamics and vaccination rate in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. Three scenarios are designed to explore the impact of the disease severity, confirmation bi… Show more
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