Conformity can support diversity, while nonconformity can amplify polarization: this is what mathematical models suggest, which have innovatively analyzed social media users' activities based on their tendency toward conformity or nonconformity.
The research, led by Elisa Heinrich Mora from Stanford University, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“The idea behind this research was to find a better way to mathematically represent how individuals make decisions in the real world,” said Kaleda Denton, from Stanford University and one of the authors of the study. This represents a new approach to the problem, as most previous studies have started with the assumption that positions move around a kind of midpoint.
The existence of a midpoint is true, for instance, when analyzing the amount of food consumed or the hours of sleep, but this approach doesn’t hold when trying to analyze those with extreme left-wing or right-wing beliefs. Even in these cases, the average lies at the center, but approaching them this way fails to capture some fundamental aspects.
To overcome these limitations, the researchers developed new mathematical models capable of identifying different groups, such as those with political views. These models allowed the team to verify how conformists tend to group around specific traits, often far from the traditional average, while nonconformists group at the extremes. “These results,” added Denton, “align with what we observe in the real world, where cultural practices and ideologies don’t just average out, but rather maintain significant variation.”
This research also challenges the assumption that conformity always leads to homogeneity: the model actually shows that under certain conditions, conformity can support diversity, while nonconformity amplifies polarization. A new model that “could help explain,” Denton concluded, “voting behavior, social media trends, or even how people assess values in group contexts.”
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