When open mindedness hinders consensus

Abstract

We perform a detailed study of the Hegselmann-Krause bounded confidence opinion dynamics model with heterogeneous confidence ${\epsilon }_i$ drawn from uniform distributions in different intervals $[{\epsilon }_l,{\epsilon }_u]$. The phase diagram reveals a highly complex and nonmonotonous behaviour, with a re-entrant consensus phase in the region where fragmentation into multiple distinct opinions is expected for the homogeneous case. A careful exploration of the phase diagram, along with an extensive finite-size analysis, allows us to identify the mechanism leading to this counter-intuitive behaviour. This systematic study over system sizes which go well beyond those of previous works, is enabled by an efficient algorithm presented in this article.

arXiv comment7 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Statistical physics of social dynamics
• Continuous Opinion Dynamics under Bounded Confidence: A Survey
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• Heterogeneous bounds of confidence: Meet, Discuss and Find Consensus!
• Mass media and heterogeneous bounds of confidence in continuous opinion dynamics
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• Recent advances in opinion propagation dynamics: A 2020 Survey
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• Opinion polarization in human communities can emerge as a natural consequence of beliefs being interrelated