Group interactions modulate critical mass dynamics in social convention

Abstract

How can minorities of individuals overturn social conventions? The theory of critical mass states that when a committed minority reaches a critical size, a cascade of behavioural changes can occur, overturning apparently stable social norms. Evidence comes from theoretical and empirical studies in which minorities of very different sizes, including extremely small ones, manage to bring a system to its tipping point. Here, we explore this diversity of scenarios by introducing group interactions as a crucial element of realism into a model for social convention. We find that the critical mass necessary to trigger behaviour change can be very small if individuals have a limited propensity to change their views. Moreover, the ability of the committed minority to overturn existing norms depends in a complex way on the group size. Our findings reconcile the different sizes of critical mass found in previous investigations and unveil the critical role of groups in such a process. This further highlights the importance of the emerging field of higher-order networks, beyond pairwise interactions

10 pages, 5 figures, Supplementary Material (13 pages, 12 figures)

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• Hyper-cores promote localization and efficient seeding in higher-order processes
• Drivers of social influence in the Twitter migration to Mastodon
• Shaping New Norms for AI
• The structural evolution of temporal hypergraphs through the lens of hyper-cores
• Entropy-based models to randomize real-world hypergraphs
• Group adaptation drives opinion dynamics in higher-order networks
• Adaptive behaviors neutralize bistable explosive transitions in higher-order contagion
• Opinion response functions are key to understanding tipping of social conventions