Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.
“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”
As an example, the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt appear to exhibit a similar process, according to Szymanski. “In those countries, dictators who were in power for decades were suddenly overthrown in just a few weeks.”
The findings were published in the July 22, 2011, early online edition of the journal Physical Review E in an article titled “Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities.”
An important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion holders are working. In other words, the percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society.
To reach their conclusion, the scientists developed computer models of various types of social networks. One of the networks had each person connect to every other person in the network. The second model included certain individuals who were connected to a large number of people, making them opinion hubs or leaders. The final model gave every person in the model roughly the same number of connections. The initial state of each of the models was a sea of traditional-view holders. Each of these individuals held a view, but were also, importantly, open minded to other views.
Once the networks were built, the scientists then “sprinkled” in some true believers throughout each of the networks. These people were completely set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs. As those true believers began to converse with those who held the traditional belief system, the tides gradually and then very abruptly began to shift.
“In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models,” said SCNARC Research Associate and corresponding paper author Sameet Sreenivasan. To accomplish this, each of the individuals in the models “talked” to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener’s belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.
“As agents of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins to change,” Sreenivasan said. “People begin to question their own views at first and then completely adopt the new view to spread it even further. If the true believers just influenced their neighbors, that wouldn’t change anything within the larger system, as we saw with percentages less than 10.”
The research has broad implications for understanding how opinion spreads. “There are clearly situations in which it helps to know how to efficiently spread some opinion or how to suppress a developing opinion,” said Associate Professor of Physics and co-author of the paper Gyorgy Korniss. “Some examples might be the need to quickly convince a town to move before a hurricane or spread new information on the prevention of disease in a rural village.”
The researchers are now looking for partners within the social sciences and other fields to compare their computational models to historical examples. They are also looking to study how the percentage might change when input into a model where the society is polarized. Instead of simply holding one traditional view, the society would instead hold two opposing viewpoints. An example of this polarization would be Democrat versus Republican.
The research was funded by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) through SCNARC, part of the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS-CTA), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
The research is part of a much larger body of work taking place under SCNARC at Rensselaer. The center joins researchers from a broad spectrum of fields – including sociology, physics, computer science, and engineering – in exploring social cognitive networks. The center studies the fundamentals of network structures and how those structures are altered by technology. The goal of the center is to develop a deeper understanding of networks and a firm scientific basis for the newly arising field of network science. More information on the launch of SCNARC can be found at http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2721&setappvar=page(1)
Szymanski, Sreenivasan, and Korniss were joined in the research by Professor of Mathematics Chjan Lim, and graduate students Jierui Xie (first author) and Weituo Zhang.
““When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.””
I got that far. That statement pretty much killed any credibility they had.
So… you have a meeting of ten people. One person has a new idea. The article claims it is a foregone conclusion that everyone will adopt this idea.
Now, I realize the study is aimed at larger populations, but perhaps they ought to make clearer distinctions between what it does or does not apply to as well. As Yan rightly points out, it doesn’t work if there are opposing sides, and it obviously doesn’t work in very small populations either. It is also unexplained how the ideas break the 10% threshold to begin with if they do not appreciably grow below that point.
More importantly I think, what population are you aware of that would be 90% open to ANY idea, at least nowadays when information is so much more abundant? I can understand the idea of ancient Rome adopting Christianity because it filled a niche, but what about a new religion of today? I can’t see the same thing happening, and yet we know religions can still crop up.
I’d be interested to see what they actually tested to figure out that it ‘always’ happens, because it’s not what I’d expect to see in reality at all.
Does it have to be 90% or just 51%?
The main claim is kind of ridiculous regardless of the size of the population.
Consider the following scenario:
10% of a population are devout Muslims.
10% of a population are devoit Christians.
Which will be the norm?
Now, I realize there are lots of objections to this analogy — but this is really just about what the PR is claiming.
This kind of facile and absurd public summary of scientific work has got to stop if social scientists want to be taken seriously.
I think key is that the original 10% have unshakable beliefs. People may call themselves Christian or Muslim but few buy it without reservation.
Take a mathematical theory and lend it weight by mentioning a political uprising. What? Who says the government was overthrown by everyone in the population having the same idea? What idea is that exactly?
People who participate in such a thing for a myriad of personal reasons, from a strong political conviction to simply hating the way things are, or just hoping that “doing something” will improve their lives and lead to food on the table.
You can’t oversimplify human motivations like that. It’s not very scientific.
The American Revolution was supported by 1/5th of the American population and 4/5ths for the British. That 20% spread like fire. It probably started at about 10%. So….there’s a little bit of comparative analysis.
Yeah, and before 10% were on board, it was only 9%, and before that, 8. What’s it up to now?
‘When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. [...] ‘Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.’
That’s a contradiction. Obviously the number has to be below 10 percent to get to 10 percent, so saying below 10 percent never grows is bizarre.
Unless you’re saying more than 10 percent of people spontaneously have the same idea at the same time. That’s possible but also bizarre.
most of the people are in need of a form to comfort them, so, when it has become a habit, it is very difficult to come out of this circle. We are in need of someone who suffered a lot, so that we can also connect ourselves with him or her. We dont actually want to go deep into the subject, but there is always a need for a “shoulder” to lean on. The way in which someone met with cruelty done by the cruel hearted people, we want to share our problems with that form. It is purely psycological based atachment. Habit only makes or moulds the characters i believe. There was a need for a religion to console humanbeings who were in distress. When we are clear about the invisible force that operate us all we wont be thinking about anything religious in nature, but would only think about that “vaccum” that holds a lot of mysteries with it. When we burn the dead bodies, we get the ash, but when we dont, the body is intact. But in both the cases, the souls goes out in search of that spirtual world, the one who finished all kinds of responsibilties rest in peace and the one who does not, it has to wander, unfulfilled desires, commitments are to be taken care of. They are in need of someone to pass the message. This earth remains still a question mark.
That’s exactly the first thought I had… There’s missing logic somewhere among the neurons.
Yan et al,
It’s not crap, it’s computer models of networks and the assumptions and mechanisms are well described. There is nothing to complain about. Everyone except you realizes it’s not a quantitative prediction about human society, it’s a vastly simplified but illustrative approximation.
And it has strong intuitive appeal. It’s very cool
And therefore the earth is still flat and the sun revolves around it?
One can only suspect that a few reviewers, if there were any. should be rather surprised to learn this considering that these weere once the overwhelmingly dominant views of their time and one could actually be burned at the stake for doubting it.
And therefor the earth is still flat and the sun revolves around the earth?
Its time for Physical Review E to get some better editors.
Someone posted, “Generally, people of faith are not open minded to other views!”
That attitude is also common in the sciences and humanities. It’s a human problem, not a religion versus secular one. The noted physicist Max Planck put it this way:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”