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Instability of human societies as a result of conformity

A. L. Efros·P. Désesquelles
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Abstract

We introduce a new model that mimics the strong and sudden effects induced by conformity in tightly interacting human societies. Such effects range from mere crowd phenomena to dramatic political turmoil. The model is a modified version of the Ising Hamiltonian. We have studied the properties of this Hamiltonian using both a Metropolis simulation and analytical derivations. Our study shows that increasing the value of the conformity parameter, results in a first order phase transition. As a result a majority of people begin honestly to support the idea that may contradict the moral principles of a normal human beings though each individual would support the moral principle without tight interaction with the society. Thus, above some critical level of conformity our society occurs to be instable with respect to ideas that might be doubtful. Our model includes, in a simplified way, human diversity with respect to loyalty to the moral principles.

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A. L. Efros, P. Désesquelles. 2005-05-16. Instability of human societies as a result of conformity. https://doi.org/10.1142/s012918310500814x

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