ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Segregation and clustering of preferences erode socially beneficial coordination.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- On the optimal integration of intelligent agents into network systems to steer cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Opinion Dynamic and Social Clustering in a 2D Space: An Agent Based Experiment.Computational economics · 2026Article
- Anticonformists catalyze societal transitions and facilitate the expression of evolving preferences.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- How networks shape diversity for better or worse.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Individual costs and societal benefits of interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- The future of theoretical evolutionary game theory.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Sociocultural determinants of global mask-wearing behavior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- The dynamics of political polarization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The emergence and perils of polarization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Inequality, identity, and partisanship: How redistribution can stem the tide of mass polarization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Segregation and clustering of preferences erode socially beneficial coordination.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Link recommendation algorithms and dynamics of polarization in online social networks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- A systems framework for remedying dysfunction in US democracy.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Polarization on various issues has increased in many Western democracies over the last decades, leading to divergent beliefs, preferences, and behaviors within societies. We develop a model to investigate the effects of polarization on the likelihood that a society will coordinate on a welfare-improving action in a context in which collective benefits are acquired only if enough individuals take that action. We examine the impacts of different manifestations of polarization: heterogeneity of preferences, segregation of the social network, and the interaction between the two. In this context, heterogeneity captures differential perceived benefits from coordinating, which can lead to different intentions and sensitivity regarding the intentions of others. Segregation of the social network can create a bottleneck in information flows about others' preferences, as individuals may base their decisions only on their close neighbors. Additionally, heterogeneous preferences can be evenly distributed in the population or clustered in the local network, respectively reflecting or systematically departing from the views of the broader society. The model predicts that heterogeneity of preferences alone is innocuous and it can even be beneficial, while segregation can hamper coordination, mainly when local networks distort the distribution of valuations. We base these results on a multimethod approach including an online group experiment with 750 individuals. We randomize the range of valuations associated with different choice options and the information respondents have about others. The experimental results reinforce the idea that, even in a situation in which all could stand to gain from coordination, polarization can impede social progress.
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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.