Herding and idiosyncratic choices: Nonlinearity and aging-induced transitions in the noisy voter model

Abstract

We consider the herding-to-non-herding transition caused by idiosyncratic choices or imperfect imitation in the context of the Kirman Model for financial markets, or equivalently the Noisy Voter Model for opinion formation. In these original models, this is a finite-size transition that disappears for a large number of agents. We show how the introduction of two different mechanisms makes this transition robust and well defined. A first mechanism is nonlinear interactions among agents taking into account the nonlinear effect of local majorities. The second one is aging, so that the longer an agent has been in a given state the more reluctant she becomes to change state.