Group mixing drives inequality in face-to-face gatherings
May 27, 2022

Marcos Oliveira, Fariba Karimi, Maria Zens, Johann Schaible, Mathieu Génois, and Markus Strohmaier

Abstract

Uncovering how inequality emerges from human interaction is imperative for just societies. Here we show that the way social groups interact in face-to-face situations can enable the emergence of degree inequality. We present a mechanism that integrates group mixing dynamics with individual preferences, which reproduces group degree inequality found in six empirical data sets of face-to-face interactions. We uncover the impact of group-size imbalance on degree inequality, revealing a critical minority group size that changes social gatherings qualitatively. If the minority group is larger than this ‘critical mass’ size, it can be a well-connected, cohesive group; if it is smaller, minority cohesion widens degree inequality. Finally, we expose the under-representation of social groups in degree rankings due to mixing dynamics and propose a way to reduce such biases.

Communications Physics 5, 127 (2022).

[arXiv]
[Link to publication]