We study the effect of latency on binary-choice opinion formation models. Latency is introduced into the models as an additional dynamic rule: after a voter changes its opinion, it enters a waiting period of stochastic length where no further changes take place. We first focus on the voter model and show that as a result of introducing latency, the average magnetization is not conserved, and the system is driven toward zero magnetization, independently of initial conditions. The model is studied analytically in the mean-field case and by simulations in one dimension. We also address the behavior of the majority-rule model with added latency, and show that the competition between imitation and latency leads to a rich phenomenology.

• Received 11 November 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.79.046107