An imitation model based on the majority

TL;DR

This paper introduces a majority-based imitation model in social opinion dynamics, analyzing conditions for consensus and the probability of reaching agreement in finite social networks.

Contribution

It proposes a novel imitation model based on majority influence and analyzes its impact on consensus formation in social networks.

Findings

Consensus may not always be achieved under the model.

Probability of consensus depends on network structure.

Majority-based imitation influences opinion dynamics significantly.

Abstract

The voter model consists of a set of agents whose opinion is a binary variable. At each time step, an agent along with a social neighbor is selected and the agent imitates the social neighbor at the next time step. In this paper, we study a variant of the voter model: an imitation model based on the majority. The agent imitates the selected social neighbor if and only if the number of neighbors following the opinion of the selected social neighbor is more than that following the agent. We study circumstances under which a consensus can not be achieved and the probability of consensus on a finite connected social graph.