In 1914, the names “Mary” and “Helen” were all the rage for baby girls. In 2014, it was “Emma” and “Olivia” — neither of which were even among the top eight girls’ names just 15 years earlier.
How does a large population come to a consensus about which names are acceptable, and which are no longer desirable? Baby name trends are a perfect example of how norms change over time within different social groups. And based on new research, it’s likely the structure of our social networks that determines whether new norms are spontaneously adopted.
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“We may be able to use these studies to understand the critical density at which online social networks shift from local opinion formation, to spontaneous convergence on norms,” Centola told HuffPost. “The capacity of these networks to produce this kind of massive change in behavior, even though no one person or organization is advocating it, suggests that large and unexpected swings in collective attitudes and collective behaviors may become more common in the future as more and more people are connected online.”
The findings were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
