Chaos in a simple cellular automata model of a uniform society

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3305 (Springer-Verlag, London UK 2004) pp. 513--522 In this work we study the collective behaviors arising in a model of a simplified homogeneous society. Each agent is modeled as a binary ``perceptron'', receiving neighbors' opinions as inputs and outputting one of two possible opinions, according to the conformist attitude and to the external pressure of mass media. For a neighborhood size greater than three, the system shows a very complex phase diagram, including a disordered phase and chaotic behavior. We present analytic calculations, mean fields approximation and numeric simulations for different values of the parameters.