What sustains cultural diversity and what undermines it? Axelrod and beyond

TL;DR

This paper extends Axelrod's model by incorporating metric cultural states and bounded confidence, revealing how these factors influence the persistence of cultural diversity and its fragility under various conditions.

Contribution

It introduces metric states into Axelrod's model and explores how bounded confidence can sustain diversity, highlighting the conditions for its fragility.

Findings

Metric states undermine cultural diversity without noise.

Bounded confidence can sustain diversity.

Diversity persistence is fragile under certain conditions.

Abstract

We relax a simplification of Axelrod's (1997) model of cultural dissemination that has not yet been studied, the assumption that all cultural states are nominal. We integrate metric states into the original model. Computational experiments demonstrate that metric states undermine cultural diversity, even without noise, by creating sufficient overlap between agents for mutual influence. We then show how adding "bounded confidence" - a recent innovation in models of social influence - allows cultural diversity to persist. However, further experiments reveal that the solution is fragile. Diversity can be sustained only with a relatively small number of metric states, low levels of noise or narrow confidence intervals.