Associative Diffusion and the Pitfalls of Structural Reductionism

Abstract

In their insightful comment, DellaPosta and Davoodi argue that our finding (Goldberg and Stein 2018) that segmented networks inhibit cultural differentiation does not generalize to large networks. However, their demonstration rests on an incorrect implementation of the preference updating process in the associative diffusion model. We show that once this discrepancy is corrected, cultural differentiation is more pronounced in fully connected networks, irrespective of network size and even under extreme assumptions about cognitive decay. We use this as an opportunity to discuss the associative diffusion model’s assumptions and scope conditions, as well as to critically reassess prevailing contagion-based diffusion models.