Tipping points in social convention Once a population has converged on a consensus, how can a group with a minority viewpoint overturn it? Theoretical models have emphasized tipping points, whereby a sufficiently large minority can change the societal norm. Centola et al. devised a system to study this in controlled experiments. Groups of people who had achieved a consensus about the name of a person shown in a picture were individually exposed to a confederate who promoted a different name. The only incentive was to coordinate. When the number of confederates was roughly 25% of the group, the opinion of the majority could be tipped to that of the minority. Science, this issue p. 1116 Committed minorities can overturn established social conventions when a critical size is reached. Theoretical models of critical mass have shown how minority groups can initiate social change dynamics in the emergence of new social conventions. Here, we study an artificial system of social conventions in which human subjects interact to establish a new coordination equilibrium. The findings provide direct empirical demonstration of the existence of a tipping point in the dynamics of changing social conventions. When minority groups reached the critical mass—that is, the critical group size for initiating social change—they were consistently able to overturn the established behavior. The size of the required critical mass is expected to vary based on theoretically identifiable features of a social setting. Our results show that the theoretically predicted dynamics of critical mass do in fact emerge as expected within an empirical system of social coordination.

中文翻译：

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社会习俗临界点的实验证据

社会习俗的转折点 一旦一个群体达成共识，一个持有少数观点的群体怎么可能推翻它？理论模型强调了临界点，即足够多的少数人可以改变社会规范。Centola 等。设计了一个系统来在受控实验中研究这一点。就图片中显示的人的名字达成共识的一群人分别接触到宣传不同名字的同盟。唯一的动力是协调。当同盟的人数大约是该团体的 25% 时，多数人的意见可能会倾向于少数人的意见。科学，这个问题 p。1116 当达到临界规模时，承诺的少数群体可以推翻既定的社会习俗。临界质量的理论模型表明，少数群体如何在新社会习俗的出现中启动社会变革动力。在这里，我们研究了一个人为的社会习俗系统，其中人类主体相互作用以建立新的协调平衡。研究结果提供了直接的实证证明，在不断变化的社会习俗的动态中存在一个临界点。当少数群体达到临界质量——即启动社会变革的临界群体规模时——他们始终能够推翻既定的行为。所需临界质量的大小预计会根据理论上可识别的社会环境特征而有所不同。