dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaLocal Convergence and Global Diversity: The Robustness of Cultural Homophily
| Authors | Andreas Flache, Michael W. Macy |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0701333 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0701333 |
Abstract
Recent extensions of the Axelrod model of cultural dissemination (Klemm et al 2003) showed that global diversity is extremely fragile with small amounts of cultural mutation. This seemed to undermine the original Axelrod theory that homophily preserves diversity. We show that cultural diversity is surprisingly robust if we increase the tendency towards homophily as follows. First, we raised the threshold of similarity below which influence is precluded. Second, we allowed agents to be influenced by all neighbors simultaneously, instead of only one neighbor as assumed in the orginal model. Computational experiments show how both modifications strongly increase the robustness of diversity against mutation. We also find that our extensions may reverse at least one of the main results of Axelrod. While Axelrod predicted that a larger number of cultural dimensions (features) reduces diversity, we find that more features may entail higher levels of diversity.
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"abstract": "Recent extensions of the Axelrod model of cultural dissemination (Klemm et al\n2003) showed that global diversity is extremely fragile with small amounts of\ncultural mutation. This seemed to undermine the original Axelrod theory that\nhomophily preserves diversity. We show that cultural diversity is surprisingly\nrobust if we increase the tendency towards homophily as follows. First, we\nraised the threshold of similarity below which influence is precluded. Second,\nwe allowed agents to be influenced by all neighbors simultaneously, instead of\nonly one neighbor as assumed in the orginal model. Computational experiments\nshow how both modifications strongly increase the robustness of diversity\nagainst mutation. We also find that our extensions may reverse at least one of\nthe main results of Axelrod. While Axelrod predicted that a larger number of\ncultural dimensions (features) reduces diversity, we find that more features\nmay entail higher levels of diversity.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0701333",
"authors": [
"Andreas Flache",
"Michael W. Macy"
],
"categories": [
"physics.soc-ph",
"nlin.AO"
],
"title": "Local Convergence and Global Diversity: The Robustness of Cultural Homophily",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0701333"
},
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