This paper continues the search for quantitative data in order to better characterize cultural dynamics. Several models have been developed to accommodate these findings,. Berger and coworkers have also showed that the popularity of a first name is influenced by the popularity of phonetically similar names. Furthermore, rates of increase in popularity appear correlated with rates of decrease: what becomes popular rapidly is also rapidly forgotten. Popularity trends may have a consistent direction for many years, while random copying generally predicts no correlation between years. Other findings, however, challenge the idea that chance dominates cultural dynamics. They also showed that the hypothesis that individuals copy each other at random is sufficient to explain this pattern. Some statistical regularities have nevertheless been found.īentley and coworkers showed that, in many cultural domains, relatively few traits are common while the vast majority are very rare (trait frequency follows log-normal or power law distributions, see, , ). In this context, fashions and fads are defined intuitively as cultural traits whose popularity undergoes striking fluctuations (often short-term) that do not have any obvious cause, and therefore appear whimsical or erratic. Recently, fashions have received renewed attention as a source of data to test models of cultural dynamics –. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.įashions and fads are ubiquitous in modern societies, , as well as in “traditional” societies and in past societies, and have been studied in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and economics –. Movie data available at įunding: AA has been supported by the Uniquely Human project funded by the Swedish Research Council and by a Newton International Fellowship. Dog breed popularity data available at figshare. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. Received: MaAccepted: JPublished: September 10, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Ghirlanda et al. PLoS ONE 9(9):Įditor: Alex Mesoudi, Durham University, United Kingdom We reach these conclusions through a new, widely applicable method to measure the cultural impact of events, capable of disentangling the event's effect from ongoing cultural trends.Ĭitation: Ghirlanda S, Acerbi A, Herzog H (2014) Dog Movie Stars and Dog Breed Popularity: A Case Study in Media Influence on Choice. Movies' influence on breed popularity was strongest in the early 20 th century, and has declined since. We also find that a movie's impact on breed popularity correlates with the estimated number of viewers during the movie's opening weekend-a proxy of the movie's reach among the general public. Here we consider the impact of mass media on popular culture, showing that the release of movies featuring dogs is often associated with an increase in the popularity of featured breeds, for up to 10 years after movie release. ![]() Although a few statistical regularities have been observed in fashion cycles, their empirical characterization is still incomplete. They are ubiquitous in human societies, and have recently been used as a source of data to test models of cultural dynamics. Fashions and fads are important phenomena that influence many individual choices.
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