Universality of opinions disappearing in sociophysical models of opinion dynamics: From initial multitude of opinions to ultimate consensus

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wołoszyn, Maciej, Masłyk, Tomasz, Pająk, Szymon, Malarz, Krzysztof
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Wołoszyn, Maciej
Masłyk, Tomasz
Pająk, Szymon
Malarz, Krzysztof
author_facet Wołoszyn, Maciej
Masłyk, Tomasz
Pająk, Szymon
Malarz, Krzysztof
contents Possibility of reaching a consensus in social systems with strong initial fragmentation is one of the most interesting issues in sociopysics. It is also intriguing what the dynamics of such processes is. To address those problems, we performed computer simulations using well-established models of social opinion formation, namely the voter, Sznajd, and Latané models. We investigated opinion dynamics in cases where the initial number of opinions is very large, equal to the number of actors (the voter and Latané models) or when every second actor has their own opinion (Sznajd model), with some variations on the update schemes, lattice topologies, effective ranges of interaction, and information noise levels. For all considered models, the number of opinions assumed by the actors is finally almost always reduced to only one. However, while the voter and Latané models exhibit a power-law time decrease in the number of opinions, the Sznajd model follows a complex three-stage behavior. We also demonstrated that the mean/median time of reaching the consensus scales with system size according to a power law for voter and Sznajd models, while for the Latané model this increase is even faster. Our results show that in the studied models the consensus is possible, provided that a long enough and model-dependent time to reach this state is available.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_05114
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Universality of opinions disappearing in sociophysical models of opinion dynamics: From initial multitude of opinions to ultimate consensus
Wołoszyn, Maciej
Masłyk, Tomasz
Pająk, Szymon
Malarz, Krzysztof
Physics and Society
Possibility of reaching a consensus in social systems with strong initial fragmentation is one of the most interesting issues in sociopysics. It is also intriguing what the dynamics of such processes is. To address those problems, we performed computer simulations using well-established models of social opinion formation, namely the voter, Sznajd, and Latané models. We investigated opinion dynamics in cases where the initial number of opinions is very large, equal to the number of actors (the voter and Latané models) or when every second actor has their own opinion (Sznajd model), with some variations on the update schemes, lattice topologies, effective ranges of interaction, and information noise levels. For all considered models, the number of opinions assumed by the actors is finally almost always reduced to only one. However, while the voter and Latané models exhibit a power-law time decrease in the number of opinions, the Sznajd model follows a complex three-stage behavior. We also demonstrated that the mean/median time of reaching the consensus scales with system size according to a power law for voter and Sznajd models, while for the Latané model this increase is even faster. Our results show that in the studied models the consensus is possible, provided that a long enough and model-dependent time to reach this state is available.
title Universality of opinions disappearing in sociophysical models of opinion dynamics: From initial multitude of opinions to ultimate consensus
topic Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.05114