Description
Schelling’s 1971 model of segregation proposed a simple rule similar to the Ising model of ferromagnetism to determine what minimum percentage for preference of sameness in an agent’s neighbours would lead to global segregation. The surprising result that a mild preference was sufficient to cause the emergence of an equilibrium state of segregated communities speaks volumes in today's increasingly polarised society. It begs the question — how will this model behave for a time-dependent Schelling model that can even more closely represent the real social networks of our world? In this work we investigate the effects of a finite lifetime and asymmetric preferences for agents, to better model the dynamics in observable scenarios such as gender-based seating choices. We find that segregation can become replaced by a global population imbalance, in which one state is progressively driven from the system. We explore the resulting phase plane and compare our results with observational data, and so infer underlying human preferences in realistic non-equilibrium scenarios.
| I am the presenting author | Yes |
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