Propensity and stickiness in the naming game: Tipping fractions of minorities

TL;DR

This paper extends the binary naming game model with continuous parameters affecting interactions, revealing critical thresholds for minority influence and bifurcations that impact consensus dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized naming game model with two parameters, demonstrating the persistence of critical thresholds for minority influence and bifurcations affecting system stability.

Findings

Critical thresholds exist for minority influence in the model.

Above threshold, rapid consensus is achieved; below, it takes exponentially longer.

Parameters cause bifurcations altering system stability and consensus outcomes.

Abstract

Agent-based models of the binary naming game are generalized here to represent a family of models parameterized by the introduction of two continuous parameters. These parameters define varying listener-speaker interactions on the individual level with one parameter controlling the speaker and the other controlling the listener of each interaction. The major finding presented here is that the generalized naming game preserves the existence of critical thresholds for the size of committed minorities. Above such threshold, a committed minority causes a fast (in time logarithmic in size of the network) convergence to consensus, even when there are other parameters influencing the system. Below such threshold, reaching consensus requires time exponential in the size of the network. Moreover, the two introduced parameters cause bifurcations in the stabilities of the system's fixed points and may lead to changes in the system's consensus.