ArticleNature communications2021
Experimental evidence for scale-induced category convergence across populations.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- A simple threshold captures the social learning of conventions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Network structure shapes consensus dynamics through individual decisions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Scientists' Warning to Humanity: The Need to Begin Teaching Critical and Systems Thinking Early in Life.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Article
- Article
- Information architectures: a framework for understanding socio-technical systems.Npj complexity · 2025Article
- Interaction structure constrains the emergence of conventions in group communication.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- On the social nature of abstraction: cognitive implications of interaction and diversity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Mechanisms of alignment: shared control, social cognition and metacognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Topological measures for identifying and predicting the spread of complex contagions.Nature communications · 2021Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Individuals vary widely in how they categorize novel and ambiguous phenomena. This individual variation has led influential theories in cognitive and social science to suggest that communication in large social groups introduces path dependence in category formation, which is expected to lead separate populations toward divergent cultural trajectories. Yet, anthropological data indicates that large, independent societies consistently arrive at highly similar category systems across a range of topics. How is it possible for diverse populations, consisting of individuals with significant variation in how they categorize the world, to independently construct similar category systems? Here, we investigate this puzzle experimentally by creating an online "Grouping Game" in which we observe how people in small and large populations collaboratively construct category systems for a continuum of ambiguous stimuli. We find that solitary individuals and small groups produce highly divergent category systems; however, across independent trials with unique participants, large populations consistently converge on highly similar category systems. A formal model of critical mass dynamics in social networks accurately predicts this process of scale-induced category convergence. Our findings show how large communication networks can filter lexical diversity among individuals to produce replicable society-level patterns, yielding unexpected implications for cultural evolution.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.