The DOI matches its Crossref record; 63 of the 65 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Dissemination of Culture: A Model with Local Convergence and Global Polarization
Abstract
Despite tendencies toward convergence, differences between individuals and groups continue to exist in beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. An agent-based adaptive model reveals the effects of a mechanism of convergent social influence. The actors are placed at fixed sites. The basic premise is that the more similar an actor is to a neighbor, the more likely that that actor will adopt one of the neighbor's traits. Unlike previous models of social influence or cultural change that treat features one at a time, the proposed model takes into account the interaction between different features. The model illustrates how local convergence can generate global polarization. Simulations show that the number of stable homogeneous regions decreases with the number of features, increases with the number of alternative traits per feature, decreases with the range of interaction, and (most surprisingly) decreases when the geographic territory grows beyond a certain size.
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In the citing paper
“Discrete coverage as measured by Eq. ( 3) is also an accurate measure of polarization for Axelrod's Dissemination of Culture model precisely because it is categorical, even though he invokes some of the other concepts below when defining the term (Axelrod 1997).”
From Disambiguation of social polarization concepts and measures (2016) · cites this paper as Axelrod 1997
In the citing paper
“even though the traits of the agents are not cardinal values and therefore other measures would be required to quantify some aspects of the polarization.”
From Disambiguation of social polarization concepts and measures (2016) · cites this paper as Axelrod, 1997
In the citing paper
“In this case the groups are endogenously defined, and the more groups the greater the polarization.”
From Disambiguation of social polarization concepts and measures (2016) · cites this paper as Axelrod, 1997
In the citing paper
“In Axelrod's well-known model of the dissemination of culture, polarization is characterized by the appearance of regions which are internally homogeneous and have no attributes in common with the other internally homogeneous regions (Axelrod, 1997).”
From Disambiguation of social polarization concepts and measures (2016) · cites this paper as Axelrod, 1997
In the citing paper
“But it also requires group consensus and distinctness of the agents' traits.”
From Disambiguation of social polarization concepts and measures (2016) · cites this paper as Axelrod, 1997
In the citing paper
“Following the idea that we are more influenced by those similar to us, the node is then influenced as a function of the similarity with its interlocutors.”
From How digital media drive affective polarization through partisan sorting (2022) · cites this paper as [104]
In the citing paper
“Previous modeling approaches describe segregation of opinions by influence based on similarity in the opinion space, either through a confidence bound [19, 20] or through homophily [21], the preference of agents to interact with similar individuals [22, 23].”
From Modeling echo chambers and polarization dynamics in social networks (2020) · cites this paper as [20]
In the citing paper
“As such, the language model LLaMA recently gained attention for its relatively smaller size, making it more cost-effective to use 167 .”
From Machine culture (2023) · cites this paper as [167]
Citations
Cites
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 1,001–1,001 of 1,001
Emergence of Biased Consensus in Multi-Agent LLM Debates
Okawa, M. (2026) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2608.02827
Metadata
- Authors
- Axelrod, R.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- Corresponding author
- Axelrod, Robert
- ORCID
- Axelrod, Robert
- Venue
- Journal of Conflict Resolution
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1997-04
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 203-226
- ISSN
- 0022-0027 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-8766
- OpenAlex
- W2151789396
- Semantic Scholar
- fb771ded31b3ee935a3458bdb469d6151505bd0b
- Cited by
- 1,918
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 64 · 2025: 86 · 2024: 77 · 2023: 73 · 2022: 53 · 2021: 84 · 2020: 151 · 2019: 96 · 2018: 109 · 2017: 99 · 2016: 121 · 2015: 116 · 2014: 81 · 2013: 97 · 2012: 84
- FWCI
- 3.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Conflict Resolution (publishedVersion)
- Deep Blue (University of Michigan) (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Keywords
- cultural diffusion, social influence, cultural convergence, cultural change, agent-based modeling, adaptive models, polarization, local convergence, interaction range, multiple features
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