Effect of higher-order interactions on noisy majority-rule dynamics with random group sizes

Abstract

We study opinion dynamics with higher-order interactions, motivated by the fact that social influence often takes place in groups rather than only through pairwise contacts. We introduce a noisy majority-rule model on annealed hypergraphs with heterogeneous group sizes and investigate how the distribution of interaction sizes affects collective ordering and relaxation. Using analytical theory and Monte Carlo simulations, we show that group-size heterogeneity strongly shapes both the transition between ordered and mixed states and the associated time scales. In particular, broader and heavier-tailed distributions make ordering more robust by enhancing the effect of rare large-group events. They also modify the finite-size scaling of relaxation, producing a crossover from the standard logarithmic behavior to faster ordering in sufficiently broad ensembles. In the pure majority-rule limit, we further show that the exit probability near coexistence obeys a universal error-function scaling form controlled by a single structural parameter. Our results demonstrate that the full distribution of group sizes is a key determinant of nonequilibrium ordering in higher-order opinion dynamics.

21 pages, 8 figures