Voter models with contrarian agents

Abstract

In the voter and many other opinion formation models, agents are assumed to behave as congregators (also called the conformists); they are attracted to the opinions of others. In this study, I investigate linear extensions of the voter model with contrarian agents. An agent is either congregator or contrarian and assumes a binary opinion. I investigate three models that differ in the behavior of the contrarian toward other agents. In model 1, contrarians mimic the opinions of other contrarians and oppose (i.e., try to select the opinion opposite to) those of congregators. In model 2, contrarians mimic the opinions of congregators and oppose those of other contrarians. In model 3, contrarians oppose anybody. In all models, congregators are assumed to like anybody. I show that even a small number of contrarians prohibits the consensus in the entire population to be reached in all three models. I also obtain the equilibrium distributions using the van Kampen small-fluctuation approximation and the Fokker-Planck equation for the case of many contrarians and a single contrarian, respectively. I show that the fluctuation around the symmetric coexistence equilibrium is much larger in model 2 than in models 1 and 3 when contrarians are rare.

3 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (11)

• Statistical physics of social dynamics
• Sociophysics: A review of Galam models
• Voter Models on Heterogeneous Networks
• Does a Single Zealot Affect an Infinite Group of Voters ?
• On the Role of Zealotry in the Voter Model
• Conservation laws for the voter model in complex networks
• Heterogeneous Voter Models
• Evolutionary dynamics and fixation probabilities in directed networks
• Chaotic, staggered and polarized dynamics in opinion forming: the contrarian effect
• Phase transition in a coevolving network of conformist and contrarian voters
• Can Partisan Voting Lead to Truth?

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Zealots in the mean-field noisy voter model
• Nonreciprocal Ising model
• The noisy voter model under the influence of contrarians
• The influence of contrarians in the dynamics of opinion formation
• Bifurcations in models of a society of reasonable contrarians and conformists
• Complex dynamics of a nonlinear voter model with contrarian agents
• Dynamical phase transitions in the nonreciprocal Ising model
• From Microscopic Heterogeneity to Macroscopic Complexity in the Contrarian Voter Model
• Adoption of Innovations with Contrarians and Repentant Agents
• Consensus, polarisation and coexistence in a continuous opinion dynamics model with quenched disorder
• Biased-voter model: how persuasive a small group can be?
• Contrarian Voter Model under the influence of an Oscillating Propaganda: Consensus, Bimodal behavior and Stochastic Resonance
• Persistent individual bias in a voter model with quenched disorder
• Collective decision making with a mix of majority and minority seekers
• Solution of the Voter Model by Spectral Analysis
• Stochastic Bifurcations in the Nonlinear Parallel Ising Model
• q-deformed evolutionary dynamics in simple matrix games
• Anonymous leadership and stochastic resonance in collectives of self-propelled robots
• Nonreciprocal Blume-Capel Model with Antisymmetric Single-Ion Anisotropies
• Stable target opinion through power law bias in information exchange
• A Nonlinear Transform for the Diagonalization of the Bernoulli-Laplace Diffusion Model and Orthogonal Polynomials