Consensus time and conformity in the adaptive voter model

TL;DR

This paper extends the adaptive voter model to include opinion conflicts resolved by acquiring new opinions, analyzing how this affects the time to reach consensus and revealing a phase transition in consensus dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces an extension of the adaptive voter model with conflict resolution by opinion change and provides an analytical study of consensus time and phase transitions.

Findings

Identification of a dynamical phase transition in consensus time scaling

Analytical expressions for mean consensus time in the extended model

Insights into the complex behavior of opinion formation models

Abstract

The adaptive voter model is a paradigmatic model in the study of opinion formation. Here we propose an extension for this model, in which conflicts are resolved by obtaining another opinion, and analytically study the time required for consensus to emerge. Our results shed light on the rich phenomenology of both the original and extended adaptive voter models, including a dynamical phase transition in the scaling behavior of the mean time to consensus.