Phase transition in the Galam's majority-rule model with information-mediated independence

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a social opinion model incorporating independent behavior influenced by collective information, revealing continuous phase transitions and universality class characteristics through analytical and simulation methods.

Contribution

It introduces an explicit mean-field solution for the model with information-mediated independence and characterizes the phase transition nature.

Findings

Independent opinion causes order-disorder phase transitions

Transitions are continuous and belong to the mean-field Ising universality class

Kramers-Moyal analysis offers insights into social volatility

Abstract

We study the Galam's majority-rule model in the presence of an independent behavior that can be driven intrinsically or can be mediated by information regarding the collective opinion of the whole population. We first apply the mean-field approach where we obtained an explicit time-dependent solution for the order parameter of the model. We complement our results with Monte Carlo simulations where our findings indicate that independent opinion leads to order-disorder continuous nonequilibrium phase transitions. Finite-size scaling analysis show that the model belongs to the mean-field Ising model universality class. Moreover, results from an approach with the Kramers-Moyal coefficients provide insights about the social volatility.