THE SZNAJD CONSENSUS MODEL WITH CONTINUOUS OPINIONS

SANTO FORTUNATO
2005 International Journal of Modern Physics C  
In the consensus model of Sznajd, opinions are integers and a randomly chosen pair of neighbouring agents with the same opinion forces all their neighbours to share that opinion. We propose a simple extension of the model to continuous opinions, based on the criterion of bounded confidence which is at the basis of other popular consensus models. Here the opinion s is a real number between 0 and 1, and a parameter \epsilon is introduced such that two agents are compatible if their opinions
more » ... from each other by less than \epsilon. If two neighbouring agents are compatible, they take the mean s_m of their opinions and try to impose this value to their neighbours. We find that if all neighbours take the average opinion s_m the system reaches complete consensus for any value of the confidence bound \epsilon. We propose as well a weaker prescription for the dynamics and discuss the corresponding results.
doi:10.1142/s0129183105006917 fatcat:oainyubnijh3zp6p4k7wqdhbja