TRANSCEND: The Role of Anticonformity in Social Collective Adaptation

Grant no.: 2023/51/I/HS6/02269

Funding agency:  National Science Centre (NCN), Poland & Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Funding scheme: OPUS LAP

Funding period: 29.08.2024-28.08.2028 (48 months)

Budget: 1 222 400 PLN Title in Polish: Rola antykonformizmu w kolektywnej adaptacji społecznej

Research team:

Principal Investigator (Kierownik):

• Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron (Wroclaw, PL)
• Mirta Galesic (Vienna, AT)

Senior Investigators (Główni wykonawcy):

• Henrik Olsson (Vienna, AT)
• Barbara Pabjan (Wroclaw, PL)

Investigators (Wykonawcy):

• Maciej Doniec (Wroclaw, PL)
• Gabriela Juncosa (Vienna, AT)
• Barbara Kamińska (Wroclaw, PL)
• Arkadiusz Lipiecki (Wroclaw, PL)
• Lasmi Marbun (Vienna, AT)

Collaborators (Współpracownicy):

• Angelika Abramiuk-Szurlej (Wroclaw, PL)
• Kaja Bilińska (Wroclaw, PL)
• Arkadiusz Jędrzejewski (Wroclaw, PL)
• Barbara Nowak B.Sc. student (Wroclaw, PL)
• Ph.D. / M.Sc. / B.Sc. student

Aims and scope:

The significance of collective adaptation in the face of pandemics and wars has become painfully clear in recent years. We need a transdisciplinary, quantitative, and socially useful approach to help increasingly complex societies adapt to these changes. The TRANSCEND project combines knowledge from cognitive and social sciences with methods used by mathematicians and physicists within the theory of complex systems. We focus on anticonformity – going against others in a collective – and investigate its effects on collective adaptation (CA). Anticonformity is complex in nature, with many different faces and causes that are not yet fully understood. Moreover, its role in the context of collective adaptation is unexplored and nontrivial, with both positive and negative effects on adaptation. Therefore, the aim of the TRANSCEND project is to go beyond the state of the art by evaluating the role of different forms of anticonformity in collective adaptation. We aim to achieve it by integrating agent-based models (ABMs) with descriptive models of social response and experiments in human groups, as shown on the right; this is a simplified scheme, more advanced models will be considered in the project. This approach allows for the study of the dynamics of individual agents and their interactions, aiming to understand the emergence of collective phenomena in complex social systems.

Tasks:

WP1: The role of anticonformity in depolarizing polarized social groups:

WP 1.1. Developing agent-based models to understand the role of anticonformity in depolarizing polarized social groups.

WP 2.1 Validating agent-based models’ predictions about the role of anticonformity in depolarizing polarized social groups.

WP2:  The interplay between different types of anticonformity, conformity and cognitive dissonance.

WP 2.1: Implementing various forms of anticonformity, conformity and cognitive dissonance into agent-based models based on multidimensional descriptive models of social response.

WP 2.2: Assessing the effects of the interaction between different types of anticonformity, conformity and cognitive dissonance.

Task 2.3: Establishing a publicly accessible virtual laboratory in NetLogo for agent-based models integrated with multidimensional descriptive models of social response.

WP 3: Collective adaptation in social networks: the cumulative effect of the network structure and the locations of anticonformists.

WP 3.1: Collective adaptation in social networks: evaluating the cumulative effect of network structure and the locations of anticonformists within agent-based modeling.

WP 3.2: Collective adaptation in social networks: evaluating the cumulative effect of network structure and the locations of anticonformists within  empirical data.

Expected impact:

The project is transdisciplinary in nature, combining knowledge from cognitive and social psychology with methods used by mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists within the theory of complex systems. From the point of view of basic research it will, in particular, contribute to (1) social dynamics by providing comprehensive understanding of collective social adaptation, (2) social psychology by translating different types of anticonformity into ABMs and evaluating their impact on social dynamics, (3) computational social science by showing how ABMs can be conducted rigorously. From a utilitarian point of view, this project will contribute to identifying strategies that can enhance collective social adaptation, which is crucial in the modern world that undergoes constant and rapid changes.

Publications:

Peer-reviewed articles in JCR-listed journals

2025 (1+), 2024 (0)

 1. Lipiecki, A., Sznajd-Weron, K. (2025) Depolarizing power of anticonformity, Expert Systems with Applications 285, 127879 (doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2025.126851)

Peer-reviewed articles in non JCR-listed journals

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Book chapters

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Conference papers/posters

• (0+), 2023 (1)

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Forthcoming publications, submitted papers and work in progress 

Lipiecki, A., Sznajd-Weron, K. (2025) When Heterogeneity Drives Hysteresis: Anticonformity in the Multistate $q$-Voter Model on Networks

Project team meetings:

• 3^rd TRANSCEND meeting 26-28.11.2025, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wroclaw, Poland
• 2^nd TRANSCEND meeting (during Collective Learning Workshop and Collective Adaptation Workshop), 29.06-05.07.2025 Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Austria
• Kick-off meeting (part of the workshop “Analyzing Social Worlds through the Lens of Interaction Streams vs Networks”) , 29-31.10.2024 Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Austria