Skip to main content
. 2024 Oct 15;3(10):pgae393. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae393

Fig. 3.

A scatter-plot chart where each point represents one simulation. The x-axis is labeled “Perspective polarization”, the y-axis is labeled “Accuracy polarization”, and the color legend for the points is labeled “Bias polarization.” The bias polarization scale ranges from 0 to 0.5, where the value zero is very light gray and 0.5 is black. The points are densest at the bottom right corner of the plot, where there is a high level of perspective polarization and a low level of accuracy polarization. Most of the points are medium to light gray.

Relationship between the final belief polarization about the topic (perspective), the authority’s accuracy and bias, after five debunking actions. Each data point represents one pair of simulations; therefore, there are 243 points shown in the plot (see Fig. S5 for labels). Belief polarization is defined as the absolute value of the difference between the two subgroups’ beliefs (i.e. mean of belief distributions). The x- and y-axis represent polarization in beliefs about the perspective on the topic and the authority’s accuracy, respectively; the points are color-coded by polarization in beliefs about the authority’s bias. The vertical dashed line represents the initial level of perspective belief polarization.