City Research Online

Abstract

Social conventions govern countless behaviors all of us engage in every day, from how we greet each other to the languages we speak. But how can shared conventions emerge spontaneously in the absence of a central coordinating authority? The Naming Game model shows that networks of locally interacting individuals can spontaneously self-organize to produce global coordination. Here, we provide a gentle introduction to the main features of the model, from the dynamics observed in homogeneously mixing populations to the role played by more complex social networks, and to how slight modifications of the basic interaction rules give origin to a richer phenomenology in which more conventions can co-exist indefinitely.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright John Benjamins Publishing 2016.
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology Q Science > QA Mathematics
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Mathematics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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