Eur. Phys. J. B 57, 481-486 (2007)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2007-00186-3

Decline of minorities in stubborn societies

¹ Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Manufacturing Engineering, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, USA
² Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Clarkson University, Postdam, NY, 13699-5815, USA
³ The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA

Corresponding author: ^a mporfiri@poly.edu

Received: 6 September 2006
Revised: 27 March 2007
Published online: 29 June 2007

Abstract

Opinion compromise models can give insight into how groups of individuals may either come to form consensus or clusters of opinion groups, corresponding to parties. We consider models where randomly selected individuals interact pairwise. If the opinions of the interacting agents are not within a certain confidence threshold, the agents retain their own point of view. Otherwise, they constructively dialogue and smooth their opinions. Persuasible agents are inclined to compromise with interacting individuals. Stubborn individuals slightly modify their opinion during the interaction. Collective states for persuasible societies include extremist minorities, which instead decline in stubborn societies. We derive a mean field approximation for the compromise model in stubborn populations. Bifurcation and clustering analysis of this model compares favorably with Monte Carlo analysis found in the literature.