ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Why more social interactions lead to more polarization in societies.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- More connections, higher polarization: The role of weak ties and status-driven dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Reply to Górski et al.: Polarization requires opinions, not just negative ties.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Redefining koinophilia: Solution to social isolation and polarization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- More social interactions, more polarization? The evidence is not there.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Reply to Völker et al.: On the evidence of increased close friendships in societies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- How Online Cross-Cutting and Like-Minded Interactions Relate with Emerging Adults' Prosocial Tendencies: Cognitive and Affective Empathy as Mediators.Psychology research and behavior management · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Over the past two decades, the number of close social connections increased substantially, at least by a factor of two. At the same time, societal opinions have become increasingly polarized in many Western countries. To explore whether these trends could be connected, we employ a simple computational model of society, where people-within their social networks-continuously compare and update their opinions. Here, we show that the model that is known to realistically capture both homophily and social balance exhibits a phase transition phenomenon where, above a critical social connectivity, an explosive transition toward strong polarization must occur. The model allows us to understand the empirical inflation of polarization during the last decades as a function of the observed increased values of social connectivity. In the presence of a small fraction of synchronized influencers, the transition becomes continuous; however, polarization then appears at lower connectivities. We discuss the implications of the presence of a phase transition in social polarization.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.