Modeling Explosive Opinion Depolarization in Interdependent Topics

Understanding the dynamics of opinion depolarization is pivotal to reducing the political divide in our society. We propose an opinion dynamics model for interdependent topics represented in a polar space, where zealots holding extreme opinions are less prone to change their minds. We analytically show that the phase transition from initial polarization to a consensus, as a function of increasing social influence, is explosive if topics are not correlated. We validate our theoretical framework with empirical opinion polls from the American National Election Survey, including polarized and interdependent topics.