[Paper Review] Robust multiculturality emerges from layered social influence

Federico Battiston, M. San Miguel+2 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jun 17, 2016

Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence3 citations

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that layered social influence—where individuals interact through distinct topic-specific networks—enables robust multiculturality even with few cultural traits and under cultural drift. It shows that structural redundancy across layers determines a critical threshold for cultural coexistence, with low redundancy leading to persistent multiculturalism regardless of trait count.

ABSTRACT

Why is our society multicultural? Based on the two mechanisms of homophily and social influence, the classical model for the dissemination of cultures proposed by Axelrod predicts the existence of a fragmented regime where different cultures can coexist in a social network. However, in such model the multicultural regime is achievable only when a high number of cultural traits is present, and is not robust against cultural drift, i.e. the spontaneous mutations of agents' traits. In real systems, social influence is inherently organised in layers, meaning that individuals tend to diversify their connections according to the topic on which they interact. In this work we show that the observed persistence of multiculturality in real-world social systems is a natural consequence of the layered organisation of social influence. We find that the critical number of cultural traits that separates the monocultural and the multicultural regimes depends on the redundancy of pairwise connections across layers. Surprisingly, for low values of structural redundancy the system is always in a multicultural state, independently on the number of traits, and is robust to the presence of cultural drift. Moreover, we show that layered social influence allows the coexistence of different levels of consensus on different topics. The insight obtained from simulations on synthetic graphs are confirmed by the analysis of two real-world social networks, where the multicultural regime persists even for a very small number of cultural traits, suggesting that the layered organisation of social interactions might indeed be at the heart of multicultural societies.

Motivation & Objective

• To explain why multiculturalism persists in real-world societies despite theoretical models predicting its fragility.
• To investigate how the layered structure of social influence affects cultural diversity and consensus formation.
• To determine whether layered influence can stabilize multicultural outcomes under cultural drift and low trait counts.

Proposed method

• Modeling social influence as multiple interconnected layers, each representing a distinct topic of interaction.
• Extending Axelrod's cultural dissemination model to include layered networks with topic-specific connections.
• Simulating cultural dynamics on synthetic networks with varying levels of structural redundancy across layers.
• Analyzing the critical number of cultural traits needed for multicultural vs. monocultural regimes as a function of redundancy.
• Validating findings using real-world social network data to assess persistence of multiculturality under low trait counts.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How does the layered organization of social influence affect the emergence and stability of multiculturalism?
• RQ2 What is the role of structural redundancy across layers in determining the transition between monocultural and multicultural regimes?
• RQ3 Can multiculturality persist even with a small number of cultural traits when influence is layered?
• RQ4 How does cultural drift impact the stability of multicultural states in layered networks?
• RQ5 To what extent do real-world social networks exhibit the predicted robust multiculturality under low trait counts?

Key findings

• For low structural redundancy across layers, the system remains in a multicultural state regardless of the number of cultural traits.
• Multiculturality becomes robust to cultural drift in low-redundancy layered networks, unlike in classical models.
• The critical number of cultural traits required for multiculturalism decreases significantly with reduced redundancy in inter-layer connections.
• Layered influence enables coexistence of different consensus levels on different topics, reflecting real-world cultural diversity.
• Real-world social networks analyzed confirm the persistence of multiculturalism even with very few cultural traits, supporting the model's validity.