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| 1 | \documentclass{article} | ||
| 2 | \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} | ||
| 3 | \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} | ||
| 4 | |||
| 5 | \usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex} | ||
| 6 | \addbibresource{sources.bib} | ||
| 7 | |||
| 8 | \title{FNS25 Research Plan} | ||
| 9 | \author{Aiden Woodruff} | ||
| 10 | |||
| 11 | \begin{document} | ||
| 12 | \maketitle | ||
| 13 | |||
| 14 | \section{Selected paper} | ||
| 15 | |||
| 16 | The selected paper is ``Experimental evidence for tipping points in social | ||
| 17 | convention'' by Centola et al. \cite{centola_experimental_2018}. The social | ||
| 18 | science report is cited across disciplines from swarm robotics to virology. | ||
| 19 | |||
| 20 | \subsection{Main topic} | ||
| 21 | |||
| 22 | Centola et al. collect experimental evidence to support theoretical models of | ||
| 23 | tipping points in social conventions. The prior work on critical mass as | ||
| 24 | defined in game theory and observational studies suggest dedicated minorities | ||
| 25 | of anywhere from 10-40\% of a population are large enough to effect changes in | ||
| 26 | conventions. The authors vary the size of minority groups to determine the | ||
| 27 | threshold past which dedicated actors are able to disrupt the convention in | ||
| 28 | a name game. | ||
| 29 | |||
| 30 | \subsection{Methods} | ||
| 31 | |||
| 32 | The study engaged 194 online subjects in a game where pairs of players | ||
| 33 | coordinate in naming a picture of a person for their own gain. Participants | ||
| 34 | were randomly assigned to independent groups of variable size. Within those | ||
| 35 | groups, members were matched pairwise for a number of rounds. Each round, pairs | ||
| 36 | of players interacted each round to gain 10\textcent{} if their names matched | ||
| 37 | or else lose 10\textcent. | ||
| 38 | |||
| 39 | When a naming convention was reached, dedicated confederates were introduced | ||
| 40 | which simultaneously chose the same alternative (chosen from common previous | ||
| 41 | played names). The theoretical tipping point was 25\% of the population, and so | ||
| 42 | committed minorities in the range of 15\% to 35\% were introduced across | ||
| 43 | different trials. | ||
| 44 | |||
| 45 | Centola et al then developed a model based on a simple sliding window of memory | ||
| 46 | which was able to predict 80\% of experimental results. They used the model to | ||
| 47 | increase population size further and find a more exact critical mass | ||
| 48 | percentage. | ||
| 49 | |||
| 50 | The model was implemented in R and provided as part of supplementary materials | ||
| 51 | on GitHub. | ||
| 52 | |||
| 53 | \subsection{Data} | ||
| 54 | |||
| 55 | The details of each round were recorded, including: group sizes, round counts, | ||
| 56 | all names assigned by players in each round, and confederate sizes and | ||
| 57 | behaviors. Experimental data were used to tune the sliding window memory model. | ||
| 58 | Then minority and group sizes, memory, network density, and strategy preference | ||
| 59 | were varied to achieve more accurate values for the tipping point. | ||
| 60 | |||
| 61 | \subsection{Results and conclusions} | ||
| 62 | |||
| 63 | The tipping point was found to be around 25-31\% of the population empirically | ||
| 64 | and more precisely around 24.3\% for the developed model. The results of | ||
| 65 | Centola et al. align well with certain qualitative studies in organizational | ||
| 66 | settings, which they suggest may be due to the rewards of following convention | ||
| 67 | being clearly defined. When they adjusted agent strategy preferences, the | ||
| 68 | tipping point remained below 50\%. | ||
| 69 | |||
| 70 | They extend their discussion to understanding intentional pushes to change | ||
| 71 | social opinion and naturally evolving acceptability of different social | ||
| 72 | behaviors. | ||
| 73 | |||
| 74 | Centola et al. provided an emperical value for tipping points which is widely | ||
| 75 | cited. Their work also supports the idea that the tipping point is precise in | ||
| 76 | a population \cite{babitz_how_2025}. | ||
| 77 | |||
| 78 | \subsection{Evaluation} | ||
| 79 | |||
| 80 | Centola et al. build on similar games and their disciplines own conventions to | ||
| 81 | devise this study. Their results are not general to every social convention but | ||
| 82 | still serve as empirical evidence for the critical mass phenomenon. The | ||
| 83 | proposed model provides a method to explore other hypotheses. The raw data can | ||
| 84 | also be used to develop and test other models. Since their own sliding window | ||
| 85 | memory model only predicted 80\% of experimental subject choices (even with | ||
| 86 | longer memories), there may well be a better model which can be tuned to their | ||
| 87 | data. | ||
| 88 | |||
| 89 | Even without the more precise threshold predicted by Centola et al.'s model, | ||
| 90 | their experimental threshold is a nice result. | ||
| 91 | |||
| 92 | \section{Experimental proposal} | ||
| 93 | |||
| 94 | \subsection{Goal and novelty} | ||
| 95 | |||
| 96 | My goal is to replicate the sliding window memory model used by Centola et al. | ||
| 97 | and vary the strategy preference among certain members of the network. I am | ||
| 98 | hoping to more accurately model real world networks in which certain actors | ||
| 99 | have much a greater aversion to changing conventions than others. Additionally, | ||
| 100 | I want to try specifically adjusting the influence (i.e. node degree) of those | ||
| 101 | individuals. | ||
| 102 | |||
| 103 | \subsection{Data} | ||
| 104 | |||
| 105 | I plan to run experiments on actor networks of the same type as Centola et al. | ||
| 106 | I will choose different independent variables and determine tipping points for | ||
| 107 | each configuration. | ||
| 108 | |||
| 109 | I will also explore for data from similar studies to compare my results to. | ||
| 110 | |||
| 111 | \subsection{Methods} | ||
| 112 | |||
| 113 | I plan to use SNAP \cite{leskovec2016snap} for network infrastructure and | ||
| 114 | analysis. The code implemented by Centola et al. is written in R and seems to | ||
| 115 | run slowly on my machine. The code is short (less than 200 lines overall) and | ||
| 116 | so I plan to re-implement it in C++. | ||
| 117 | |||
| 118 | The tipping points found by Centola et al. were robust to network density, so I | ||
| 119 | will plan to study less dense networks. Depending on the trial, I will | ||
| 120 | introduce influential nodes of high degree. | ||
| 121 | |||
| 122 | Smaller network were more susceptible to dedicated minorities, and so I am also | ||
| 123 | interested in how variable strategy preference will affect small networks like | ||
| 124 | those in the experiments (\(\le 30\) participants). | ||
| 125 | |||
| 126 | Additionally, if I have time I may try to construct a different model that can | ||
| 127 | more accurately predict the experimental data from Centola et al. Then it will | ||
| 128 | be worth repeating the same experiments to see how the results differ. | ||
| 129 | |||
| 130 | \subsection{Result evaluation criteria} | ||
| 131 | |||
| 132 | Statistical significance will be a necessary result for a successful study. My | ||
| 133 | hypothesis is that influential conservative nodes will cause the tipping point | ||
| 134 | to be higher in small networks but not as much in large networks. | ||
| 135 | |||
| 136 | \printbibliography | ||
| 137 | |||
| 138 | \end{document} | ||
| 139 | |||
