Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Abstract In this paper, we seek to shed new light on the social process of public opinion formation. Drawing on previous contributions in cognition studies and political science, we propose and analyze a model in which heterogeneous agents (citizens) collectively learn and modify their opinions about a specific policy issue. The assumption of nonrationality on the part of agents gives core values, enduring general needs, social interaction, and the combination of the citizens´ intuition and occasional deliberate reasoning a key role in the dynamics of public opinion formation.
Fatás‐Villafranca et al. (Tue,) studied this question.