The influence of local majority opinions on the dynamics of the Sznajd model

Abstract

In this work we study a Sznajd-like opinion dynamics on a square lattice of linear size $L$. For this purpose, we consider that each agent has a convincing power $C$, that is a time-dependent quantity. Each high convincing power group of four agents sharing the same opinion may convince its neighbors to follow the group opinion, which induces an increase of the group's convincing power. In addition, we have considered that a group with a local majority opinion (3 up/1 down spins or 1 up/3 down spins) can persuade the agents neighboring the group with probability $p$, since the group's convincing power is high enough. The two mechanisms (convincing powers and probability $p$) lead to an increase of the competition among the opinions, which avoids dictatorship (full consensus, all spins parallel) for a wide range of model's parameters, and favors the occurrence of democratic states (partial order, the majority of spins pointing in one direction). We have found that the relaxation times of the model follow log-normal distributions, and that the average relaxation time $\tau$ grows with system size as $\tau \sim L^{5/2}$, independent of $p$. We also discuss the occurrence of the usual phase transition of the Sznajd model.

7 pages, 6 figures, contribution to the VIIth Brazilian Meeting on Simulational Physics, Joao Pessoa/PB, Brazil, August 2013 - to appear in Journal of Physics: Conference Series

References in corpus (4)

• Statistical physics of social dynamics
• Sociophysics: A review of Galam models
• A Biased Review of Sociophysics
• Consequence of reputation in the Sznajd consensus model