{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,16]],"date-time":"2026-05-16T03:59:37Z","timestamp":1778903977204,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":37,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,24]],"date-time":"2019-12-24T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1577145600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Asymmetry in contrarian behavior is investigated within the Galam model of opinion dynamics using update groups of size 3 with two competing opinions A and B. Denoting x and y the respective proportions of A and B contrarians, four schemes of implementations are studied. The first scheme activates contrarians after each series of updates with probabilities x and y for agents holding respectively opinion A and B. Second scheme activates contrarians within the update groups only against global majority with probability x when A is the majority and y when B is the majority. The third scheme considers in-group contrarians acting prior to the local majority update against both local majority and minority opinions. The last scheme activates in-group contrarians prior to the local majority update but only against the local majority. The main result is the loss of the fifty\u2013fifty attractor produced by symmetric contrarians. Producing a bit less contrarians on its own side than the other side becomes the key to win a public debate, which in turn can guarantee an election victory. The associated phase diagram of opinion dynamics is found to exhibit a rich variety of counterintuitive results.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e22010025","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,24]],"date-time":"2019-12-24T10:28:43Z","timestamp":1577183323000},"page":"25","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":13,"title":["Asymmetric Contrarians in Opinion Dynamics"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"22","author":[{"given":"Serge","family":"Galam","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"CEVIPOF\u2014Centre for Political Research, Sciences Po and CNRS, 98 rue de l\u2019Universit\u00e9, 75007 Paris, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9751-9551","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Taksu","family":"Cheon","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Laboratory of Physics, Kochi University of Technology, Tosa Yamada, Kochi 782-8502, Japan"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,24]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Noorazar, H., Vixie, K.R., Talebanpour, A., and Hu, Y. 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