Balancer effects in opinion dynamics

We introduce a novel type of contrarian agent, the balancer, to the Galam model of opinion dynamics, which features group-majority update, in order to account for the existence of social skepticism over one-sidedness. We find that, along with majoritarian floaters and single-sided inflexibles, the inclusion of balancers, who normally act as floaters but oppose inflexibles in their presence, brings about the emergence of a critical point on parametric plane of the dynamical system. Around the critical point, three distinct phases of opinion dynamics separated by discontinuous changes are found.