Cultural practices diffuse from small groups to the wider population in patterned ways

Evidence

But cultural changes are never random, nor do they befall us as plagues. Trends happen because individuals choose to take up new behaviors. And when we examine the history of cultural change, there are clear patterns in how humans move from one practice to another. Sixty years before the moptop, social scientist William Graham Sumner seemingly predicted how it would rise and fall: “A new fashion of dress seems at first to be absurd, ungraceful, or indecent. After a time this first impression of it is so dulled that all conform to the fashion.” In almost all instances, new behaviors begin as an exclusive practice of smaller social groups—whether elites or outsiders—and then eventually spread to the wider population. This is true for the diffusion of superficial hairstyles but also applies to things not considered “fashions”: practical technologies like cars and hybrid seed corn, delicacies like chocolate and gin, political and spiritual beliefs, and the succession of artistic movements in modern art. The thing we call culture is always an aggregation of individual human behaviors, and if taste were the mere product of random idiosyncrasies and irrational psychologies, culture would display no patterns, only noise. The fact that preferences in these disparate fields follow a similar rhythm of change suggests there must be universal principles of human behavior at work—the presence of a “cultural gravity” nudging humans into the same collective behaviors at the same time. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 17

Categorization

• XREF: Quotes William Graham Sumner on fashion acceptance and evokes the whole diffusion-from-elites literature; connects to the reader’s framework on status signaling. — connects to: Individual status seeking produces the patterned commonalities called culture — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 300; Cultural change follows patterned diffusion from small groups outward, implying universal principles; Enduring cultural movements arise from insular real-world subcultures — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 864 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that culture is always aggregation of chosen behaviors plus a ‘cultural gravity’ underpins an entire explanatory framework that resists easy summary.

Broader Connections

• Cultural change follows patterned diffusion from small groups outward, implying universal principles #expands (0.95)
• Mainstreaming of subcultural aesthetics drives fringe groups toward ever more extreme self-differentiation #expands (0.82) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 812
• Enduring cultural movements arise from insular real-world subcultures #exemplifies (0.78) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 864
• Subcultures form new status hierarchies for those lacking global status #exemplifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 399