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The dynamics of norm change in the cultural evolution of language

Author

Listed:
  • Roberta Amato

    (Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain; Universitat de Barcelona Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS), Universitat de Barcelona, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain)

  • Lucas Lacasa

    (School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom)

  • Albert Díaz-Guilera

    (Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain; Universitat de Barcelona Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS), Universitat de Barcelona, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain)

  • Andrea Baronchelli

    (Department of Mathematics, City, University of London, London EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom)

Abstract

What happens when a new social convention replaces an old one? While the possible forces favoring norm change—such as institutions or committed activists—have been identified for a long time, little is known about how a population adopts a new convention, due to the difficulties of finding representative data. Here, we address this issue by looking at changes that occurred to 2,541 orthographic and lexical norms in English and Spanish through the analysis of a large corpora of books published between the years 1800 and 2008. We detect three markedly distinct patterns in the data, depending on whether the behavioral change results from the action of a formal institution, an informal authority, or a spontaneous process of unregulated evolution. We propose a simple evolutionary model able to capture all of the observed behaviors, and we show that it reproduces quantitatively the empirical data. This work identifies general mechanisms of norm change, and we anticipate that it will be of interest to researchers investigating the cultural evolution of language and, more broadly, human collective behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Roberta Amato & Lucas Lacasa & Albert Díaz-Guilera & Andrea Baronchelli, 2018. "The dynamics of norm change in the cultural evolution of language," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 115(33), pages 8260-8265, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:nas:journl:v:115:y:2018:p:8260-8265
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    Cited by:

    1. Azim Shariff & Jean-François Bonnefon & Iyad Rahwan, 2021. "How safe is safe enough? Psychological mechanisms underlying extreme safety demands for self-driving cars," Post-Print hal-03236635, HAL.
    2. James Andreoni & Nikos Nikiforakis & Simon Siegenthaler, 2021. "Predicting social tipping and norm change in controlled experiments," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118(16), pages 2014893118-, April.

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