Group interactions modulate critical mass dynamics in social convention

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 w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Communications physics 2022-03, Vol.5 (1), p.1-10, Article 64
Main Authors: Iacopini, Iacopo, Petri, Giovanni, Baronchelli, Andrea, Barrat, Alain
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/705/1042
639/766/530/2801
Condensed Matter
Conventions
Critical mass
Empirical analysis
Hypotheses
Minority & ethnic groups
Norms
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Population
Social factors
Social interaction
Social networks
Statistical Mechanics
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Summary: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 processes. This further highlights the importance of the emerging field of higher-order networks, beyond pairwise interactions. Critical mass dynamics, where a minority of committed individuals reaching a critical size can overturn stable social conventions, is typically modelled by taking into account pairwise interactions only. Here, the authors generalise the Naming Game model to higher-order social interactions, and show both numerically and analytically how the interplay of local interactions and group size influences global social outcomes.
ISSN:2399-3650
2399-3650
DOI:10.1038/s42005-022-00845-y