The researchers identified the minimum statistical threshold of 10% required to alter group majority opinion. The online article, Minority Rules: Scientist Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas, explains the research, "Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion."
The image below depicts group behavior over time and shows how the initial ten percent of committed opinion holders can change entire group behavior. It is important to note that the initial ten percent must hold an unshakable belief. This study has potential implications for entire school systems and the adoption of innovative behavior.
The abstract of the research is below and an accompanying PDF located here. The entire research article titled, "Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities" is available online.
Abstract:
We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value p_c ≈ 10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time, T_c, taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. In particular, for complete graphs we show that when p < p_c, T_c ∼ \exp(α(p)N), while for p > p_c, T_c ∼ \ln N. We conclude with simulation results for Erd\Hos-Rényi random graphs and scale-free networks which show qualitatively similar behavior.
