Reinforcement and the Origin, Rate and Extent of Cultural Diffusion

Cultural diffusion occurs as a logistic process and the dependent variables in this investigation are origin, rate and asymptotes from logistic equations which were fitted by Zvi Griliches to through-time data on the adoption of hybrid corn in each of 132 crop-reporting districts. In multiplicative power functions measures, actual reinforcement to farmers explained 57 percent of the variance in the rate of adoption, expected reinforcement to farmers explained 59 percent of the variance in the asymptotes of the logistic processes and expected reinforcement to developers explained 91 percent of the variance in the origins. This is evidence for the possible importance of reinforcement in explaining variations in macro social change processes.