[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-1-en-105":3,"doc-seo-177648-105":53,"doc-detail-177648-en":126},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,14,19,24,29,34,39,44,49],{"id":8,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":11,"show_sort_weight":12,"slug":13},11,1,"Template","Presentations",90,"presentations",{"id":15,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":16,"show_sort_weight":17,"slug":18},12,"Resumes",80,"resumes",{"id":20,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":21,"show_sort_weight":22,"slug":23},14,"Invoices",70,"invoices",{"id":25,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":26,"show_sort_weight":27,"slug":28},15,"Posters",60,"posters",{"id":30,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":31,"show_sort_weight":32,"slug":33},16,"Social Media",50,"social-media",{"id":35,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":36,"show_sort_weight":37,"slug":38},17,"Forms",40,"forms",{"id":40,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":41,"show_sort_weight":42,"slug":43},18,"Letters",30,"letters",{"id":45,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":46,"show_sort_weight":47,"slug":48},21,"Paper Templates",5,"papers-templates",{"id":50,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":51,"show_sort_weight":4,"slug":52},158,"General","general-158",{"code":4,"msg":54,"data":55},"ok",{"site_id":56,"language":57,"slug":58,"title":59,"keywords":60,"description":61,"schema_data":62,"social_meta":119,"head_meta":121,"extra_data":123,"updated_unix":125},105,"en","atypicality-and-cultural-success","ATYPICALITY AND CULTURAL SUCCESS","","Cultural items vary in how quickly they become popular, and the study argues that success is shaped by how atypical an item is relative to its peers. Natural language processing is applied to thousands of songs to quantify lyrical differentiation and relate it to popularity. More lyrical difference from the genre predicts greater popularity. The effect weakens when lyrics matter less or when differentiation plays a smaller role, and it emerges for lyrical topics rather than style. Findings clarify cultural dynamics and psychological foundations.",{"@graph":63,"@context":118},[64,80,101],{"@type":65,"itemListElement":66},"BreadcrumbList",[67,71,74,77],{"item":68,"name":69,"@type":70,"position":9},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":72,"name":10,"@type":70,"position":73},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/",2,{"item":75,"name":46,"@type":70,"position":76},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/paper-templates/",3,{"item":78,"name":59,"@type":70,"position":79},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/atypicality-and-cultural-success/177648/",4,{"url":78,"name":59,"@type":81,"image":82,"author":87,"headline":59,"publisher":90,"fileFormat":93,"inLanguage":57,"description":61,"dateModified":94,"datePublished":95,"encodingFormat":93,"isAccessibleForFree":96,"interactionStatistic":97},"DigitalDocument",{"url":83,"@type":84,"width":85,"height":86},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/atypicality-and-cultural-success/177648.png","ImageObject",442,249,{"name":88,"@type":89},"Melati","Person",{"url":68,"name":91,"@type":92},"DocShare","Organization","application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document","2026-10-07","2026-09-02",true,{"@type":98,"interactionType":99,"userInteractionCount":79},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":100},"ViewAction",{"@type":102,"mainEntity":103},"FAQPage",[104,110,114],{"name":105,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":107},"What does the study propose drives cultural success?","Question",{"text":108,"@type":109},"The study proposes that similarity to peers, operationalized as lyrical atypicality relative to a genre, helps shape popularity rather than treating success as random.","Answer",{"name":111,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":112},"How is song popularity measured?",{"text":113,"@type":109},"Popularity is measured using Billboard digital download rankings sampled every three months across a multi-year period and across major genres.",{"name":115,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What method is used to analyze song lyrics?",{"text":117,"@type":109},"Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is used to identify latent themes across songs and to characterize topic composition within genres.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":78,"og:type":120,"og:title":59,"og:site_name":91,"og:description":61},"article",{"robots":122,"canonical":78},"index,follow",{"doc_id":124,"site_id":56},177648,1791334430,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":127},{"doc_id":124,"user_id":128,"nickname":88,"user_avatar":129,"doc_module":9,"category_id":45,"category_name":46,"doc_title":59,"doc_description":61,"doc_content":130,"file_id":131,"file_url":132,"file_type":133,"file_size":134,"view_count":79,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":9,"is_downloadable":9,"audit_status":9,"page_count":135,"language":136,"language_code":57,"site_id":56,"html_lang":57,"table_of_contents":137,"faqs":138,"seo_title":139,"seo_description":61,"update_tm":140,"read_time":141},962085570644,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_994ba38a5ba835b3df7d355c54d3ed8d","Running Head: ATYPICALITY AND CULTURAL SUCCESS\nAtypicality and Cultural Success\nJonah Berger\nUniversity of Pennsylvania\nGrant Packard\nWilfrid Laurier University\nThe authors thank Shawn Zamechek for assistance with the LDA and Amir Goldberg for the clever difference in differences approach. The authors contributed equally and are listed alphabetically. Address correspondence to Jonah Berger: jberger@wharton.upenn.edu.\n\u000f\nAbstract\nWhy do some cultural items become popular?  While some have argued that success is random, we suggest that how similar items are to their peers plays an important role.  Natural language processing of thousands of songs examines the relationship between lyrical differentiation (i.e., atypicality) and song popularity.  Results indicate that the more different a song’s lyrics are from its genre, the more popular it becomes.  This relationship is weaker in genres where lyrics matter less (i.e., dance) or where differentiation matters less (i.e., pop) and occurs for lyrical topics but not style.  The results shed light on cultural dynamics, why things become popular, and the psychological foundations of culture more broadly.\nKeywords: popularity, natural language processing, cultural success, psychological foundations of culture, music\n\u000f\nWhy do some things catch on?  Academics and popular writers alike have long been interested in cultural dynamics, or why some songs, movies, and other cultural items become popular (Kashima 2014; Lieberson 2000; Simonton 1980).  Some songs become hits while others fail and some movies become blockbusters while others don’t.  What makes some cultural items successful?\nOne possibility is that popularity is random.  Even domain experts have difficulty predicting success (Bielby & Bielby, 1994), and researchers have argued that popularity is driven by chance patterns of social influence (Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006).  These perspectives suggest that success has little to do with features of the cultural item themselves.\nBuilding on research on the psychological foundations of culture, however, we suggest that the similarity between items may help shape success.  Research on cross-cultural psychology has demonstrated the influence of culture on individual-level psychological processes (Markus & Kitiyama, 1991).  But the reverse is also true; psychological processes shape the norms, practices, and items that make up culture (Norenzayan et al., 2006; Kashima, 2008; Schaller & Crandall, 2004).  In particular, people have a drive for stimulation (Zuckerman, 1979), and from an early age, children are attracted to novel stimuli, or those different from what they have experienced (Flavell, Miller, & Miller 2001).  This suggests that similarity between concepts should shape cultural success. The things people have experienced should determine how novel a given new cultural item seems.  Taken to a collective level, cultural items that are more atypical, or differentiated from their peers, may be liked more, and, consequently, become more popular.\nUnfortunately, empirically testing such propositions has been constrained by the ability to quantify differences between cultural items at scale.  To address this issue, we use textual analysis to measure lyrical differentiation across thousands of songs. Importantly, the differentiation we examine is bounded, not infinite. A Country song whose lyrics sound like Death Metal would be different from most Country songs, but would also be unlikely to be classified as Country in the first place.  Thus, we examine whether among songs classified as belonging to a given cultural category (i.e., genre), those whose lyrics are more atypical are more successful. Similar to Boyer’s (1994) notion of minimally counterintuitive concepts, such songs are different from the prototype but not so different as to be outside the genre.\nMethod\nFirst, we collected data on song popularity. To focus on individuals’ preferences, we used Billboard’s digital download ran","cbCais4R4RiAqDja","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCais4R4RiAqDja","docx",235090,28,"English","# Abstract\n# Introduction\n# Method\n## Data sources\n## Topic modeling\n## Measuring lyrical differentiation","[{\"question\":\"What does the study propose drives cultural success?\",\"answer\":\"The study proposes that similarity to peers, operationalized as lyrical atypicality relative to a genre, helps shape popularity rather than treating success as random.\"},{\"question\":\"How is song popularity measured?\",\"answer\":\"Popularity is measured using Billboard digital download rankings sampled every three months across a multi-year period and across major genres.\"},{\"question\":\"What method is used to analyze song lyrics?\",\"answer\":\"Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is used to identify latent themes across songs and to characterize topic composition within genres.\"}]","ATYPICALITY AND CULTURAL SUCCESS | DOCX",1788328725,10]