Introduction

This study examines social conventions and how a critical mass of a minority group can change established collective behaviour. The paper analyses the theoretical models of critical mass and conducts experiments to verify their existence in the changing social conventions. The purpose of the research is to understand the dynamics of social conventions’ shifts and their implications for organisations’ and governments’ conventional behaviours.

Findings

The research results indicate that the tipping point required for established behavior to change corresponds with the size of the critical minority group’s population. The necessary population required to create this tipping point varies from 10% to 40%, depending on the social setting. The paper derives its predictions based on theoretical models that account for individual memory length (M) and the population size (N) of the social group. The study then tests these theoretical predictions through an experimental approach, which results in direct empirical demonstration of the tipping point’s existence, as predicted by theory. A minority group can change the behaviour of the majority when they reach the critical mass, that is, the critical group size needed for initiating social change.

Methodology

To study social conventions, the paper used an artificial system where human participants interacted to establish naming conventions as a behavioural model. The experimental approach aims to test a broad range of theoretical predictions derived from the existing literature on critical mass dynamics in social conventions. The researchers synthesized current theoretical and observational tipping-point dynamics accounts to determine the critical mass size required to initiate social change within this system of coordination. The participants had to decide which naming convention to follow and would have only their peers’ interaction history to base their decision.

Results

The paper shows that the expected memory length (M) influences the minimum critical mass size required to initiate the new social convention and that the required tipping point population decreases with the memory length scale. The study found that stochastic fluctuations influence smaller populations’ critical mass size, but this uncertainty lessens as the group population increases. The critical mass required to change established behaviour from current experiments in the artificial system was around 25% of the population.

Recommendations

The research is significant for understanding the dynamics of critical mass in collective behaviour, particularly for businesses and governments, which can use this knowledge to create change through the activity of a small fraction of the population. The results suggest that establishing a critical mass of 30% may be sufficient to overturn established gender norms in organizational settings. However, the authors note that the critical mass required for changing social conventions is likely to vary in different situations, and further empirical work is needed to determine specific social settings’ applicability. The paper encourages further research to explore the dynamics of endogenous systems of social coordination to test and expand current findings.