2020/07/04 by Paweł Sobkowicz, Sobkowicz, Pawel
Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Social and Intergroup Psychology
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2007.02154
openalex publication_date 2020/07/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Most of the opinion dynamics models in sociophysics have their historic origin in studies two-dimensional magnetization phenomena. This metaphor has proven quite useful, as it allowed to use well known techniques, relating individual behaviours of single spins and their interactions, to large scale properties, such as magnetization or magnetic domains creation. These physical properties were then ``mapped'' to social concepts: spin orientation to a person's views on a specific issue, magnetization to global opinion on the issue, etc. During the past 20 years, the models were significantly expanded, using more complex individual agent characteristics and even more complex types of the interactions, but the power of the metaphor remained unchanged. In the current paper we propose to use a new physical system as the basis for new ideas in sociophysics. We shall argue that the concepts and tools devoted to studies of High Entropy Alloys (HEAs) could significantly broaden the range of social concepts ``addressable'' by sociophysics, by focusing on a wider range of global phenomena, arising from atomic properties, interactions and arrangements. We illustrate the new idea by calculating a few characteristics of a simple HEA system and their possible ``mapping'' into social concepts.