Between Monoculture and Cultural Polarization

Agent-based Models of the Interplay of Social Influence and Cultural Diversity

Bibliographic Data

ID7528434
AuthorsAndreas Flache (0000-0002-8276-8819, University of Groningen, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume25
Issue4
Pages996-1023
Publication date2018-09-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Archaeological Method and Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1072-5369 • E-ISSN: 1573-7764
PublisherSpringer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1007/s10816-018-9391-1
OpenAlexW2892068903
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited88

Social influence is one of the most important processes in human social interaction. Very often in human social interaction, influence is assimilative in that individuals become more similar to others they interact with. Nevertheless, cultural differences continue to remain in many realms of human life, for example, in the form of technological boundaries. Research on social influence points to a range of possible reasons for persistent cultural diversity, but there is much less clarity about the interplay of various factors and conditions for cultural influence with fundamental processes of social interaction at the micro-level. In this article, I show how agent-based computational modeling can be used as an approach for unraveling the complex interplay between simple first principles of interpersonal social interaction and emergent societal outcomes. I give a brief overview illustrating some of the main approaches agent-based modelers have developed in recent decades to understand conditions and processes of the emergence of cultural diversity. Models will be discussed that generate mainly cultural consensus as long-term behavior, but also models that generate clustering of cultural attitudes in geographical or social space, and models that imply cultural polarization with sharp cultural boundaries between emergent factions. It will be discussed how model dynamics depend on further assumptions, for example about random events, or the scaling of cultural attitudes, and what are further developments in the literature, possible future directions and challenges for the application of computational agent-based modeling in archeological research on cultural boundaries

CLARITY · Cultural diversity · Diversity (politics · Economic geography · Epistemology · Geography · Polarization (electrochemistry · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Language and cultural evolution · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Psychology · Social Psychology

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