Co-evolutionnary network approach to cultural dynamics controlled by intolerance

TL;DR

This paper extends Axelrod's cultural dissemination model by incorporating a rewiring mechanism based on intolerance, revealing how different tolerance levels influence the emergence of monocultural or multicultural societies.

Contribution

It introduces a co-evolutionary network model with rewiring driven by intolerance, showing how network dynamics affect cultural diversity outcomes.

Findings

Low tolerance leads to monocultural frozen states.

Intermediate tolerance prevents rewiring, maintaining multiculturalism.

Rewiring influences cultural globalization and fragmentation.

Abstract

Starting from Axelrod's model of cultural dissemination, we introduce a rewiring probability, enabling agents to cut the links with their unfriendly neighbors if their cultural similarity is below a tolerance parameter. For low values of tolerance, rewiring promotes the convergence to a frozen monocultural state. However, intermediate tolerance values prevent rewiring once the network is fragmented, resulting in a multicultural society even for values of initial cultural diversity in which the original Axelrod model reaches globalization.