Universality of the Threshold for Complete Consensus for the Opinion Dynamics of Deffuant et al

Santo Fortunato

Published 2004-06-02Version 1

In the compromise model of Deffuant et al., opinions are real numbers between 0 and 1 and two agents are compatible if the difference of their opinions is smaller than the confidence bound parameter \epsilon. The opinions of a randomly chosen pair of compatible agents get closer to each other. We provide strong numerical evidence that the threshold value of \epsilon above which all agents share the same opinion in the final configuration is 1/2, independently of the underlying social topology.