Dynamics of latent voters

TL;DR

This paper investigates how introducing latency into binary-choice opinion models affects their dynamics, revealing non-conservation of magnetization and complex behaviors in voter and majority rule models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel latency mechanism into opinion models and analyzes its impact, showing non-conservation of magnetization and complex phenomena.

Findings

Latency causes the average magnetization to decay to zero.

In the mean-field case, the model is analytically solvable.

Simulations show rich behaviors in the Majority Rule model with latency.

Abstract

We study the effect of latency on binary-choice opinion formation models. Latency is introduced into the models as an additional dynamic rule: after a voter changes its opinion, it enters a waiting period of stochastic length where no further changes take place. We first focus on the voter model and show that as a result of introducing latency, the average magnetization is not conserved, and the system is driven toward zero magnetization, independently of initial conditions. The model is studied analytically in the mean-field case and by simulations in one dimension. We also address the behavior of the Majority Rule model with added latency, and show that the competition between imitation and latency leads to a rich phenomenology.