Emergence of Stereotypes and Affective Polarization from Belief Network Dynamics

2026-04-11

AI Summary

This study investigates how stereotypes and affective polarization can spontaneously emerge in the absence of factual grounding or ideological conflict. To this end, we develop an agent-based dynamic belief network model that integrates social interaction and cognitive consistency mechanisms to simulate the evolution of individual beliefs and the formation of their associative structures. The model represents belief dynamics through causal and associative links and incorporates group identity as a driver of affective differentiation. Experimental results successfully reproduce the emergence of fact-free stereotypes and demonstrate how these subsequently fuel intergroup affective polarization. Our findings validate the pivotal role of purely social and cognitive mechanisms in bias formation and highlight the framework’s explanatory power and novelty in understanding irrational social fragmentation.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Reasoning with Beliefs
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Multiagent Systems: Agent-Based Simulation and Emergent Behavior

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Social recommender systems and personalization for the social Web
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Our belief systems are shaped by social processes, such as observations and influence, and by cognitive processes, such as the drive for internal coherence. These processes steer how individual beliefs evolve and become connected. The resulting belief networks contain both causal and associative links, including spurious ones, such as stereotypes. Here, we develop an agent-based model of belief networks that demonstrates how two basic mechanisms -- social interaction and a drive for internal coherence -- can give rise to such stereotypes without any underlying reality. We further demonstrate how stereotypes, when coupled with shared group identity, can give rise to affective polarization, even in the absence of ideological conflicts.

Problem

• stereotypes
• affective polarization
• belief networks
• social interaction
• internal coherence

Innovation

• belief network dynamics
• agent-based modeling
• stereotype emergence
• affective polarization
• cognitive coherence