The Deffuant model on $mathbb{Z}$ with higher-dimensional opinion spaces


Abstract in English

When it comes to the mathematical modelling of social interaction patterns, a number of different models have emerged and been studied over the last decade, in which individuals randomly interact on the basis of an underlying graph structure and share their opinions. A prominent example of the so-called bounded confidence models is the one introduced by Deffuant et al.: Two neighboring individuals will only interact if their opinions do not differ by more than a given threshold $theta$. We consider this model on the line graph $mathbb{Z}$ and extend the results that have been achieved for the model with real-valued opinions by considering vector-valued opinions and general metrics measuring the distance between two opinion values. Just as in the univariate case, there exists a critical value for $theta$ at which a phase transition in the long-term behavior takes place.

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