Local Convergence and Global Diversity: From Interpersonal to Social Influence

Abstract

Axelrod (1997) showed how local convergence in cultural influence can preserve cultural diversity. We argue that central implications of Axelrod's model may change profoundly, if his model is integrated with the assumption of social influence as assumed by an earlier generation of modelers. Axelrod and all follow up studies employed instead the assumption that influence is interpersonal (dyadic). We show how the combination of social influence with homophily allows solving two important problems. Our integration of social influence yields monoculture in small societies and diversity increasing in population size, consistently with empirical evidence but contrary to earlier models. The second problem was identified by Klemm et al.(2003a,b), an extremely narrow window of noise levels in which diversity with local convergence can be obtained at all. Our model with social influence generates stable diversity with local convergence across a much broader interval of noise levels than models based on interpersonal influence.

20 pages, 3 figures, Paper presented at American Sociological Association 103rd Annual Meeting, August 1-4, 2008, Boston, MA. Session on Mathematical Sociology

References in corpus (5)

• Homophily, Cultural Drift and the Co-Evolution of Cultural Groups
• Effects of noise and confidence thresholds in nominal and metric Axelrod dynamics of social influence
• Information feedback and mass media effects in cultural dynamics
• What sustains cultural diversity and what undermines it? Axelrod and beyond
• Why more contact may increase cultural polarization

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Social nucleation: Group formation as a phase transition
• Bounded Confidence under Preferential Flip: A Coupled Dynamics of Structural Balance and Opinions
• Order book model with herd behavior exhibiting long-range memory
• Resisting hostility generated by terror: An agent-based study
• Opinion dynamics with memory: how a society is shaped by its own past
• Setting the Agenda: Different strategies of a Mass Media in a model of cultural dissemination
• Fitness voter model: damped oscillations and anomalous consensus
• Field evidence of social influence in the expression of political preferences: the case of secessionist flags in Barcelona
• Evidence for mixed rationalities in preference formation
• Approximation of the first passage time distribution for the birth-death processes
• A framework for the calibration of social simulation models
• Combinatorial aspect of fashion
• The role of zealots in the spread of linguistic traits