This area is called sociophysics, and the name already indicates that it deals with sociological and social science issues related to physics. Professor Stefan Bornholdt conducts research and lectures on this topic at the University of Bremen. “This branch has its roots in econophysics, which uses tools from statistical physics. In the 1990s, increasing computerization and the internet, which was still relatively novel, meant that theoretical physicists also looked curiously at stock market data and were astonished to see that they had similar properties to avalanches or earthquakes, which are well known from physics. That’s why we came up with the idea of studying economic mass behavior – for example, in the event of a crash or a stock market bull – using methods from physics,” explains Bornholdt.

How Do Crowds of People Behave?

While modeling for the financial markets was begun in the new field of econophysics, this procedure also became interesting for sociology with slightly altered approaches. “Physical models can also be assembled for the behavior of large crowds of people,” explains the Bremen university lecturer. “How people flock from a large stadium, for example, can be examined just as much as how they form an opinion or their voting behavior.” For the physicists, an individual person becomes a particle – similar to one of millions of grains of sand trickling down a slope: “Which path they take seems to be a coincidence. But the resulting avalanche follows laws and can be mathematically modeled.”

Stefan Bornholdt and his research group at the Institut für Theoretische Physik at the University of Bremen have just shown the surprising results that sociophysics can produce. The researchers found that polarizing political messages could be a reason for the more frequently observed narrow outcomes of elections and votes. “The American presidential election in 2016 or the Brexit decision in the same year saw an increasing polarization of the political parties. The positions became more radical, the tone sharper, the confrontations more emotional. But in the end, despite these extreme efforts, there was no clear winner, but instead just a very narrow vote. In our opinion, there is a causal link,” says Professor Bornholdt. “The most important finding of our research is that the more political messages are expressed that may have a potentially discouraging effect or try to exclude the political opponent, the greater the likelihood that the decision will be narrow result or even stalemate.”

“Hate Speech” Favors Narrow Election Results

The Bremen researchers used mathematical probability theory for their investigations, on which the so-called “voter model” is based. This is very similar to the physical model of the alignment of magnetic atoms. “For the question of which direction voters who are increasingly exposed to hate speech take, we ran the simulation with an increasing proportion of repulsive messages,” says Stefan Bornholdt. “After a certain proportion, there was suddenly no winner, instead the result was a 50:50 decision. This effect, which we have studied on a simple computer model, can also, in our opinion, appear in real life and offer an explanation for the close elections and referendums that have taken place.”

Other research topics and their results also show how sociophysics works. Back in 2010, Bornholdt’s group discovered that the mandatory installation of “intelligent electricity meters” in new buildings and renovated buildings since 2010 may not only lead to electricity savings. Due to the demand for electricity at certain times, there may also be peaks on the electricity market – just like on the stock exchange – which could lead to temporary grid overloads and thus blackouts. In another study, the scientists showed that the multiple changes in the price of gasoline in one day results in a higher overall price level.