The Negativity Magnet: How Affective Disruption Restructures Discursive Power in AI Collectives

Summary

A study of 96 sessions and 3,840 messages examining reply concentration and affective disruption in four-agent collectives.

Manuscript available as a preprint. This record does not imply journal publication or peer review.

Method / approach

Experimental comparison of 12 four-agent deliberation conditions and analysis of reply networks.

Contribution

The paper examines how a negative-affect intervention concentrates replies directed at one agent.

Interpretation limits

Preprint: reply concentration alone does not measure persuasion, quality or consciousness. It does not support direct generalization to human groups.

Citation

Covas, V. (2026). The Negativity Magnet: How Affective Disruption Restructures Discursive Power in AI Collectives [Working paper; preprint]. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6226560