Majority versus minority dynamics: phase transition in an interacting two-state spin system.

Abstract

We introduce a simple model of opinion dynamics in which binary-state agents evolve due to the influence of agents in a local neighborhood. In a single update step, a fixed-size group is defined and all agents in the group adopt the state of the local majority with probability p or that of the local minority with probability 1-p. For group size G=3, there is a phase transition at p(c)=2/3 in all spatial dimensions. For p>p(c), the global majority quickly predominates, while for p<p(c), the system is driven to a mixed state in which the densities of agents in each state are equal. For p=p(c), the average magnetization (the difference in the density of agents in the two states) is conserved and the system obeys classical voter model dynamics. In one dimension and within a Kirkwood decoupling scheme, the final magnetization in a finite-length system has a nontrivial dependence on the initial magnetization for all p not equal p(c), in agreement with numerical results. At p(c), the exact two-spin correlation functions decay algebraically toward the value 1 and the system coarsens as in the classical voter model.