2025/02/25 by Raphael Eichhorn, Eichhorn, Raphael, Felix Hermann +3 · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #FOS: Mathematics #Game Theory and Voting Systems #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Probability (math.PR)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.18619
openalex publication_date 2025/02/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study a variant of the voter model on a coevolving network in which interactions of two individuals with differing opinions only lead to an agreement on one of these opinions with a fixed probability q. Otherwise, with probability 1-q, both individuals become offended in the sense that they never interact again, i.e. the corresponding edge is removed from the underlying network. Eventually, these dynamics reach an absorbing state at which there is only one opinion present in each connected component of the network. If globally both opinions are present at absorption we speak of "segregation'', otherwise of "consensus''. We rigorously show that segregation and a weaker form of consensus both occur with positive probability for every q ∈ (0,1) and that the segregation probability tends to 1 as q → 0. Furthermore, we establish that, if q → 1 fast enough, with high probability the population reaches consensus while the underlying network is still densely connected. We provide results from simulations to assess the obtained bounds and to discuss further properties of the limiting state.