The consequences of hesitation: Axelrod model with intrinsic noise

Abstract

We study the influence of hesitating agents in the Axelrod model by introducing an intrinsic noise, which is proportional to the disagreement between the interacting agents, and thus coupled to the dynamics. Our results show that, unlike the effect of the cultural drift where the noise is just controlled by an external parameter, the intrinsic noise never allows the system to reach a frozen state in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, we show that when the intrinsic noise affects the agents’ variables, the system’s behaviour is also different from the case when it affects the network of their interactions.