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Thomas C. Schelling and James M. Sakoda: the Intellectual, Technical, and Social History of a Model

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Thomas C. Schelling and James M. Sakoda: the Intellectual, Technical, and Social History of a Model Thomas C. Schelling and James M. Sakoda: The Intellectual, Technical, and Social History of a Model RAINER HEGSELMANN Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Philosophy and Law De- partment, Adickesallee 32-34, 60322 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Correspondence should be addressed to [email protected] Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 20(3) 15, 2017 Doi: 10.18564/jasss.3511 Url: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/20/3/15.html Received: 04-06-2017 Accepted: 22-06-2017 Published: 30- 06-2017 Abstract: The Journal of Mathematical Sociology (JMS) started in 1971. The second issue contained its most cited article: Thomas C. Schelling, “Dynamic Models of Seg- regation”. In that article, Schelling presented a family of models, one of which became a canonical model. To date it is called the Schelling model – an eponym that affixes the inventor’s name to the invention, one of the highest forms of scientific recognition. In the very first issue of JMS, James Minoru Sakoda published an article entitled “The Checkerboard Model of Social Interaction”. Sakoda’s article more or less went unrec- ognized. Yet, a careful comparison demonstrates that in a certain sense the Schelling model is just an instance of Sakoda’s model. A precursor of that model was already part of Sakoda’s 1949 dissertation submitted to the University of California at Berke- ley. A substantial amount of evidence indicates that in the 1970s Sakoda was well known and recognized as a computational social scientist, whereas Schelling was an unknown in the field. A generation later, the pattern of recognition almost completely reversed: Sakoda had become the unknown, while Schelling was the well-known in- ventor of the pioneering Schelling model. This article explains this puzzling pattern of recognition. Technical and social factors play a decisive role. Some contrafactual historical reflection suggests that the final result was not inevitable. Keywords: Schelling, Sakoda, Checkerboard Models, Tipping Models, Threshold Mod- els, Agent-Based Modeling Contents 1 Introduction: A Famous and a Forgotten 1 2 The Two Models 7 2.1 Schelling’s Model . .7 2.2 Sakoda’s Model . 10 2.3 Schelling’s Model: An Instance of Sakoda’s Model? . 16 3 The Prehistory: Sakoda’s 49-Model 23 3.1 Research Behind Barbed Wires: The Political and Military Background of Sakoda’s PhD-Thesis . 23 3.2 Sakoda’s 49-Model: The Very First Checkerboard Model of Social Interaction . 36 3.3 The Missing Volume The Residue: Sakoda’s Dissertation Thesis and the JERS Publications . 42 3.4 Sakoda’s Early Checkerboard Model: When Invented? . 55 4 Computational Social Science in 1950ff: A Well Known Sakoda and an Unknown Schelling 58 4.1 DYSTAL: Sakoda’s General Computer Language for the Social Sciences . 59 4.2 Sakoda’s Checkerboard Model in Early Introductions to Simulation and Modeling . 68 5 Resolving the Puzzle I: Computers, Displays, Networks and Communities 74 5.1 Can the Model be Run Without a Computer? . 74 5.2 Computing Without a Visual Display . 76 5.3 Excursion: Schelling’s On Letting a Computer Help With the Work .... 79 5.4 Spreading of the Models in Different Communities and Networks . 84 6 Resolving the Puzzle II: Schelling—a Beneficiary (and Victim) of the Matthew-Effect 91 6.1 The Well Recognized Strategist and Defense Intellectual . 91 6.2 Segregation: Modeling a Hot Policy Issue of the 1960s and 1970s by a Family of Models . 102 6.3 Excursion: Schelling—a Victim of the Matthew Effect? . 113 ii 7 How to Become an Unknown Pioneer? The Recipe and Some Concluding Remarks 119 Acknowledgements 133 References 135 iii I’ve never been sure why my little simulation got so much attention after so many years. I discovered twenty-five years later that I’d been some kind of pioneer. It must be some limitation of my scien- tific imagination that I’d no idea I was doing something generic, something with beyond my neighborhood application. Thomas C. Schelling in “Some Fun, Thirty-Five Years Ago” [2006, 1642f.] Of all the things I’ve done, I think the best thing I’ve done is the social interaction model, which solved the problem in social psy- chology of going from the individual level to the group level. James M. Sakoda in an interview with Arthur A. Hansen on August 10, 1988 [Hansen, 1994, 417] 1 Introduction: A Famous and a Forgotten In 1971, The Journal of Mathematical Sociology (JMS) started to appear. The most cited and most read article of JMS to date appeared in its second issue: Thomas Schelling, Dynamic Models of Segregation [1971a].1 Schelling’s title uses the plural form: “Dy- namic Models”, not “A Dynamic Model”. The plural is neither a misleading accident nor an overstatement—Schelling presents a family of different models. All members share four joint features: First, the models address the kind of segregation that “re- sults from the interplay of individual choices that discriminate” [1971a, 143]. Second, the primary focus is on choices related to residential segregation by color. Third, the basic structure of the models is extremely simple. A few assumptions, easy to grasp and easy to recall, are sufficient to define the models. Fourth, despite their simplicity, all the models generate surprising results—eye-openers for a better understanding of segregation. One member of the family “really made it”, and became—singular—the Schelling model: In that model the world is a two-dimensional checkerboard. It is inhabited by two groups, whites and blacks. The inhabitants perceive as their neighborhood a small area around their actual location on the checkerboard. They are content if, and only if, a certain color composition is realized in their personal neighborhood. If people are discontent, they try to move to a location that meets their composition demands. Schelling shows that a massive residential segregation can result from only mildly seg- regationist preferences. It is sufficient that people wish to avoid minority status. The main and ex ante counter-intuitive lesson is that massive segregation does not nec- essarily require massively segregationist preferences, i.e. a preference for living in a neighborhood with high percentages of like colored people. What nowadays normally is called the Schelling model, is this simple model.2 Schelling’s family of segregation models contains a one-dimensional version of the two-dimensional checkerboard model. Therein blacks and whites live in a kind of 1Cf. the JMS website at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gmas20/current. 2 We discuss the relations between the models later in section 6.2. 1 “lineland-world”. Again the inhabitants have a self-centered neighborhood definition (a couple of cells to their left, a couple of cells to their right), and again, avoid- ing minority status, is sufficient to generate a massive segregation. Sometimes the two- and one-dimensional versions are packaged together, and, then, together called the Schelling model—but only sometimes. If not stated otherwise, in the following the Schelling model is always Schelling’s two-dimensional checkerboard segregation model, and a phrase like “Schelling’s model” always refers to the Schelling model. Except for an interesting preface, Schelling’s Dynamic Models of Segregation [1971a] originated in and is basically identical with a memorandum that he had written for the RAND corporation (issued in May 1969), entitled Models of Segregation [1969a].3 That memorandum was also the source for a first short article on models of segregation that Schelling published 1969 in the American Economic Review [1969b]. Material of the RAND memorandum was also used and published as a book contribution in [1972b] and in [1974]. Later in 1978, Schelling published his best selling book Micromotives and Macrobehavior. Chapter 4 is entitled Sorting and mixing: Race and sex. It is a shortened version of the Schelling model as presented in Dynamic Models of Segrega- tion [1971a].4 All in all, Schelling’s JMS article is the first and most comprehensive journal publication of his original RAND-memorandum Models of Segregation [1969a]. In the following decades Schelling’s model has become a classic reference in many (partially overlapping) scientific contexts: explanation of residential segregation,5 un- intended consequences,6 micro-macro relations,7 clustering, attractors, social phase transitions,8 invisible-hand explanations,9 emergence of spontaneous order and struc- ture.10 In philosophy of science Schelling’s model is a (and often the) paradigmatic example for the study of mechanisms, or for reflections on the status of models more generally.11 Furthermore, Schelling’s model is considered an early and pioneering ex- 3That is stated right at the beginning of Schelling [1971a]. An eBook version of the memorandum can be downloaded for free at http://www.rand.org/about/history/nobel/schelling.html. For a remarkable difference between the article and the memorandum see footnote 211. More details on the RAND Cooperation follow later in section 6.1; see there footnote 159. 4The chapter on segregation in a one-dimensional world is left out. 5 [Fossett, 2006] gives an extensive overview on the literature. Additionally, the article presents in detail some extensions and modification of Schelling’s models. Fossett’s article is the focus article of a special issue of JMS (vol. 30, number 3–4, 2006). Basically, it is as well a special issue on Schelling’s JMS article from 1971. Based upon a search using the Social Science Citation Index, Skvoretz reports in his introduction to the special issue that Schelling’s JMS article “is the second most heavily cited article ever published by JMS” [Skvoretz, 2006, 181]. That was in 2006. In the mean time it has become JMS’ most cited and most read article.
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