Did scientists break the code for trends?

[ultramarine]

Social conformity despite individual preferences for distinctiveness

Abstract

We demonstrate that individual behaviours directed at the attainment of distinctiveness can in fact produce complete social conformity. We thus offer an unexpected generative mechanism for this central social phenomenon. Specifically, we establish that agents who have fixed needs to be distinct and adapt their positions to achieve distinctiveness goals, can nevertheless self-organize to a limiting state of absolute conformity. This seemingly paradoxical result is deduced formally from a small number of natural assumptions and is then explored at length computationally. Interesting departures from this conformity equilibrium are also possible, including divergence in positions. The effect of extremist minorities on these dynamics is discussed. A simple extension is then introduced, which allows the model to generate and maintain social diversity, including multimodal distinctiveness distributions. The paper contributes formal definitions, analytical deductions and counterintuitive findings to the literature on individual distinctiveness and social conformity.

You can read the whole thing here http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/3/140437

And funnily, I found it through the Daily Mail UK under the headline:

"Why all hipsters look the SAME: Scientists reveal the maths behind beards, bicycles and man buns"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2986776/Why-hipsters-look-Scientists-reveal-maths-beards-bicycles-man-buns.html

Am I the only one who thinks this is kinda big?

 

[squilliam]

It seems kinda obvious, of course people want to conform, they're social animals who cannot easily survive alone so they group together, this is just one of the ways they do it

 

[softgrey]

math...

it would be big if they could mathematically predict trends...
up until now most people agree that it is something organic and intuitive and very difficult to predict...

i know that some people have tried to create some sort of scientific algorithm you could plug into a computer so they could sell such a service to fashion companies...
not sure how that worked out though...
haven't heard anything about that in a long time now...
i never really believed it was possible...

frankly- just looking at those equations makes my head hurt...

 

[Not Plain Jane]

it's like a more complex version of "the tipping point," but frankly i found parts of that book to be confusing, let alone trying to follow math formulae!.

but the draw toward conformity - for many anyhow - is a given.

 

[ultramarine]

I know!

I mean, explaining math to fashion people is like ... well, you can see AND feel it.

I mean, I think it IS super important. But we need someone to translate ..

 

[florylate]

I'm going to take a proper read of that paper when I have more time (maybe during the summer). I wish I could have done my thesis on something like this! Thanks for posting it!

 

[eizhowa]

I didn't read anything I didn't feel I already knew to be honest. I don't know what is so revolutionary. They have basically just managed to graph how trends work. We have been able to describe it without a mathematical formula for a long time.

Basically, the suppliers should get better at predicting how much we are going to buy. Thats all.

 

[ErnstLudwig]

"The population rarely (?) converged with more than 8% non-conformists"

Meaning we will never converge, except in North Korea

 

[fashionista-ta]

^ I assume I am in that 8%, but my fashion sense may not be where it's most obvious