Uniform individual preferences can impede the very outcomes those people desire.

Evidence

These simulations suggest that when all individuals within a particular environment share the exact same preference for a particular group size, their joint actions may actually impede the formation of groups of the preferred size. In future simulations, it will be of interest to explore what conditions would actually lead to the optimal satisfaction of agents’ group-size preferences. It may be the case that when preferences are distributed more normally, more adaptive patterns of group formation emerge. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 841

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Allport thread: uniform ingroup preferences among the majority may paradoxically drive exclusionary outcomes. Parallels Schelling’s segregation model where shared tolerances still yield segregated neighborhoods.
• SHARE: For a colleague doing agent-based modeling of social dynamics, a clean counterintuitive result worth citing.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 841