How a committed minority can change society
Agent-based study into social diffusion

Date:
September 30, 2021
Source:
University of Groningen
Summary:
How do social conventions change? Robotic engineers and marketing
scientists joined forces to study this phenomenon, combining online
experiments and statistical analysis into a mathematical model
that shows how a committed minority can influence the majority to
overturn long- standing practices.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Over the last year, handshakes have been replaced by fist or elbow bumps
as a greeting. It shows that age-old social conventions can not only
change, but do so suddenly. But how does this happen? Robotic engineers
and marketing scientists from the University of Groningen joined forces
to study this phenomenon, combining online experiments and statistical
analysis into a mathematical model that shows how a committed minority
can influence the majority to overturn long-standing practices. The
results, which were published in Nature Communications on 29 September,
may help to stimulate sustainable behaviour.


==========================================================================
How does complex human behaviour take shape? This is studied in
many ways, mostly relying on lots of data from observations and
experiments. Ming Cao, Professor of Networks and Robotics at the Faculty
of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen, has studied
complex group behaviour in robots by using agent-based simulations,
among other methods. These agents follow a limited number of simple
rules, often inspired by nature, which can lead to realistic complex
behaviour. 'Swarming birds or schools of fish are a good example', Cao explains, 'their movements can be reproduced by agents that follow a
few simple rules on keeping a certain distance and heading in the same direction as their neighbours.' Game In parallel, the Marketing research
group at the Faculty of Economics and Business, led by Dr Jan Willem Bolderdijk, Dr Hans Risselada, and Prof. Bob Fennis, has carried out
various research projects into human behaviour, but not so many using
these kinds of agent-based models. After a discussion with Cao and his colleagues, both groups saw possibilities for such models.

Consequently, marketing PhD student Zan Mlakar and the two post-doc
researchers in Cao's group, Mengbin Ye and Lorenzo Zino, worked together creating an online experiment to gather data on the social diffusion of
new behavioural trends.

They developed an online game in which 12 participants act as
board members of a company that plans to launch one of two potential
products. The participants have to vote on which product to launch. The
catch is that the decision has to be taken unanimously. The participants
cannot discuss their choice, they vote in 24 consecutive rounds, and
they only see the distribution of votes at the end of each round. If
unanimity is reached, the participants receive a reward.

Rules Unknown to the participants, between two to four participants in
the groups studied were computer bots, programmed to stick to their
choice. 'If the majority voted for product A in the first round, the
bots were set to vote for B to try and overturn the majority', explains
Ye, who now works as Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University in
Australia. Meanwhile, the votes of the human participants over all the
rounds studied were registered. The vast majority of over 20 of these
online game rounds resulted in a unanimous vote, with humans eventually
siding with the bots to vote for product B. The results of all the games
were then analysed to look for patterns in the voting decisions of the
human participants.

Ye: 'In quite few cases, we saw a delay before the votes started changing,
but when they did, the group would reach unanimity in just a few voting rounds.' The overall voting behaviour was able to be reproduced in an agent-based model with three simple rules: do as the majority does,
stick to your previous decision, and follow the trend. 'These rules
are acknowledged in the literature as group coordination, inertia,
and trend-seeking', explains Ye. 'They have been separately studied in
human behaviour, but never combined in one model; this combination was
critical in capturing social change.' The results of the experiments
and the simulations show that new conventions can suddenly arise when
the influence of a committed minority reaches a threshold. A small group
of 'activists' can therefore change social conventions. Cao: 'However,
this only happens if the minority is also able to influence others in
their network. And this depends on the amount of risk- taking present
among the other voters.' The team are now interested in exploring what
might enhance or inhibit this risk-taking behaviour. 'We now have a solid framework and a model, which can be used to examine environmental factors
that might make people have greater inertia, or be more susceptible to
trends', says Ye.

The three basic rules could help in steering the behaviour of large
groups. 'Of course, we can't control people', stresses Cao. 'But we can
provide guidelines, for example on how to nudge people to change their behaviour.' This could be useful in the energy transition, or in getting
people to reduce their meat consumption. 'Governments already spend
money to convince people to adopt more sustainable behaviour. Our
research can help them to spend it in a more effective way.' ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Groningen. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Mengbin Ye, Lorenzo Zino, Žan Mlakar, Jan Willem Bolderdijk,
Hans
Risselada, Bob M. Fennis, Ming Cao. Collective patterns of social
diffusion are shaped by individual inertia and trend-seeking. Nature
Communications, 2021; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25953-1 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210930101422.htm

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