F. Slanina, H. Lavicka

There is significant convergence between statistical physics and mathematical sociology in approaches to their respective fields. Ising model, the single most studied statistical physics model, finds its numerous applications in sociophysics simulations. Conversely, sociologically inspired models pose new challenges to statistical physics. We believe this is the case of the Sznajd model we are studying here.
The model of Sznajd-Weron and Sznajd was designed to explain certain features of opinion dynamics. The slogan “United we stand, divided we fall” lead to simple dynamics, in which individuals placed on a lattice (one-dimensional in the first version) can choose between two opinions (political parties, products etc.) and in each update step a pair of neighbours sharing common opinion persuade their neighbours to join their opinion. Therefore, it was noted that contrary to the Ising or voter models, information does not flow from the neighbourhood to the selected spin, but conversely, it flows out from the selected cluster to its neighbours.