An Experimental Study of Critical Mass Dynamics

• In Event: 3453 - From Classic Questions to New Frontiers: Current Work in Mathematical Sociology

Abstract

Decades of research on social change has argued that small groups of committed individuals can effectively overturn a dominant social convention. More recently, theoretical models of critical mass have shown how minority groups can initiate social change dynamics in the emergence of new social conventions. However, so far it has been impossible either to test these theories of minority groups, or to quantify the direct effects of minority group size on tipping points in empirical settings. Here we study an artificial system of social conventions in which human subjects coordinate on establishing linguistic norms. We show the existence of a critical point in the tipping dynamics of social convention. When minority groups reach the critical size, they are consistently able to overturn the established behavior. We find that the critical mass necessary for social change is expected to vary based on theoretically defined features of a social setting. Our findings show that the theoretically predicted dynamics of critical mass do in fact emerge as expected within an empirical system of social coordination.

Author

• Damon M. Centola, University of Pennsylvania