Higher order interactions destroy phase transitions in Deffuant opinion dynamics model

While the Deffuant-Weisbuch model, one of the paradigmatic models of opinion dynamics, represents homophily through pairwise interactions, many real world interactions are not pairwise but happen in groups. Here, the authors take a numerical approach and extend the Deffuant model to hypergraphs of different topology, and show how introducing higher order interactions affects the phase transition to consensus.