Individualization as Driving Force of Clustering Phenomena in Humans

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Citation: Michael Mäs, Andreas Flache, Dirk Helbing (2010-10-21) Individualization as Driving Force of Clustering Phenomena in Humans. PLoS Computational Biology (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000959
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000959
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000959
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Individualization as Driving Force of Clustering Phenomena in Humans
Download: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%253Adoi%252F10.1371%252Fjournal.pcbi.1000959
Tagged: Biology (RSS)

Summary

Modified from authors' summary, CC-BY.

Modern societies are characterized by a large degree of pluralism in social, political and cultural opinions. In addition, there is evidence that humans tend to form distinct subgroups (clusters), characterized by opinion consensus within the clusters and differences between them. So far, however, formal theories of social influence have difficulty explaining this coexistence of global diversity and opinion clustering. This paper identifies a missing ingredient that helps to fill this gap: the striving for uniqueness. Besides being influenced by their social environment, individuals also show a desire to hold a unique opinion. Thus, when too many other members of the population hold a similar opinion, individuals tend to adopt an opinion that distinguishes them from others. This notion is rooted in classical sociological theory and is supported by recent empirical research. Authors develop a computational model of opinion dynamics in human populations and demonstrate that the new model can explain opinion clustering. Authors conduct simulation experiments to study the conditions of clustering. Based on our results, we discuss preconditions for the persistence of pluralistic societies in a globalizing world.