Title: The influence of contrarians in the dynamics of opinion formation,
Abstract: In this work we consider the presence of contrarian agents in discrete
3-state kinetic exchange opinion models. The contrarians are individuals that
adopt the choice opposite to the prevailing choice of their contacts, whatever
this choice is. We consider binary as well as three-agent interactions, with
stochastic parameters, in a fully-connected population. Our numerical results
suggest that the presence of contrarians destroys the absorbing state of the
original model, changing the transition to the para-ferromagnetic type. In this
case, the consequence for the society is that the three opinions coexist in the
population, in both phases (ordered and disordered). Furthermore, the
order-disorder transition is suppressed for a sufficient large fraction of
contrarians. In some cases the transition is discontinuous, and it changes to
continuous before it is suppressed. Some of our results are complemented by
analytical calculations based on the master equation.