The concept of critical mass has been invoked by social scientists and the Supreme Court in affirmative action decisions as a solution to problems related to underrepresentation of minority students in institutions of higher education. Little distinction is made by scholars between the Court's use of critical mass as a metaphor and its application in research as a mathematical concept. I use Agent‐Based Modeling—a simulation technique in which systems are modeled through repetitive interaction of autonomous decision‐making “agents” to observe the complex dynamics that emerge from interaction—to investigate the Supreme Court's conception of the relationship between student‐body composition and student isolation and stereotyping. Findings demonstrate that the relationship between student body representation and the educational outcomes of interest as detailed by the Court, specifically minority students' feeling of isolation and majority students' retention of negative stereotypes, does not exhibit a specific threshold or tipping point as we would expect from a system that has a critical mass at which sudden and sustainable change in the state of the system occurs. Simulations of student interactions show there is not one definable threshold or critical mass of minority students that achieves educational goals of reducing either the isolation felt by minority students or the negative stereotypes held by majority students about their minority peers. Instead, greater minority representation is consistently associated with better outcomes for students in all contexts.

中文翻译：

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肯定行动的关键质量：分散关键云

社会科学家和最高法院在平权行动裁决中援引了临界人数的概念，以解决与高等教育机构中少数民族学生代表性不足有关的问题。学者们对法院使用临界质量作为隐喻和将其作为数学概念应用于研究几乎没有区别。我使用基于主体的建模技术（一种模拟技术，通过自主决策“主体”的反复交互对系统进行建模，以观察交互作用中产生的复杂动态），以调查最高法院对学生与身体之间关系的构想。以及学生的隔离和刻板印象。调查结果表明，法院详细说明了学生的身体代表性与感兴趣的教育成果之间的关系，特别是少数族裔学生的孤立感和多数学生保留负面刻板印象的关系，并没有显示出我们所期望的特定阈值或临界点来自具有临界质量的系统，在该质量下会发生系统状态的突然且可持续的变化。对学生互动的模拟表明，没有一个确定的阈值或少数群体学生达到教育目标的目的是减少少数族裔学生的孤立感或多数学生对少数族裔同伴的负面刻板印象。取而代之的是，在所有情况下，更大的少数族裔代表都可以为学生带来更好的成绩。