Local Convergence and Global Diversity: From Interpersonal to Social Influence

TL;DR

This paper integrates social influence with homophily into cultural convergence models, demonstrating that it leads to stable diversity across broader noise levels and aligns better with empirical observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model combining social influence and homophily, resolving limitations of previous interpersonal influence models in explaining cultural diversity.

Findings

Stable diversity achieved across wider noise levels.

Monoculture in small societies with increasing diversity in larger populations.

Alignment with empirical evidence on cultural diversity.

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.