English

Dynamics of Non-Conservative Voters

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability 2008-04-23 v3 Statistical Mechanics Physics Education

Abstract

We study a family of opinion formation models in one dimension where the propensity for a voter to align with its local environment depends non-linearly on the fraction of disagreeing neighbors. Depending on this non-linearity in the voting rule, the population may exhibit a bias toward zero magnetization or toward consensus, and the average magnetization is generally not conserved. We use a decoupling approximation to truncate the equation hierarchy for multi-point spin correlations and thereby derive the probability to reach a final state of a given consensus as a function of the initial magnetization. The case when voters are influenced by more distant voters is also considered by investigating the Sznajd model.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0712.0364,
  title  = {Dynamics of Non-Conservative Voters},
  author = {R. Lambiotte and S. Redner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.0364},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures, 2-column revtex4 format; a minor typo in Eq. (16) fixed; current version is the final published manuscript that contains minor changes in response to referee comments