Abstract

MARTINS, Teresa Vaz  and  TORAL, Raúl. Divide and conquer. Sociologia [online]. 2012, vol.23, pp.239-250. ISSN 0872-3419.

The aim of this paper is to briefly present Sociophysics, a discipline that in recent decades has been emerging on the borders between Physics and the Social Sciences. As an illustration of its approach, we will review some opinion formation models, focusing on the conditions under which a society is more sensitive to the penetration of an external message. In particular, we will see that it is easier for a message to be commonly accepted in a society characterized by conflicts - which recalls the old maxim “divide and conquer”. We conclude by suggesting that the construction of this new field of knowledge requires a union between sociologists and physicists that goes beyond a simple juxtaposition of knowledge.

Keywords : Sociophysics; Opinion; Interdisciplinarity.

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