Creating a model using these assumptions, Professor Smaldino ran simulations where individual preference for uniqueness varies between rebel and conformist.
According to a blog in Discover magazine, the University of California professor discovered our common desire to be different means we will always converge toward conformity.
The only exception is when our definition of "different" varies widely from one person to another. In this case, everyone splits off from each other other time, with no conformity taking place.
In one version of the equation, Professor Smaldino looked at what would happen if only conformists and strict nonconformists lived on Earth.
If there were only a few nonconformists, nothing would happen in society.
But he identified a tipping point of eight per cent in which they would cause a division in what was considered the normal - creating a larger group with one identity.
Last year, Professor Jonathan Touboul, a mathematical neuroscientist at the Collège de France in Paris developed a similar equation to explain the "hipster paradox."
He claims there is always a delay between the time a trend begins to gain traction, and the time hipsters begin following it.
This delay is caused because people can't be aware of what others are deciding, in real-time.
As a result, hipsters gradually realise that the trend, and the decision has been made while making the same decision separately.
This leads to them gradually conforming towards what then becomes the mainstream.
A true hipster, by comparison, would need to be constantly changing and adapting their style, personality and "authenticity" as an immediate response to the trend, which the study suggests is impossible, and too difficult to maintain.
Professor Touboul used a theory known as Hopf bifurcation.
This theory looks at how oscillations, which in this particular case involved swinging between trends towards the mainstream and how hipsters track these trends, change over time.
Put simply, the collective delay in recognising a trend causes stronger oscillations and as time continues, the oscillations become larger.
The full mathematical theory is available from Professor Touboul's The Hipster Effect: When Anticonformists All Look the Same paper.
"If you take large sets of interacting individuals - whether hipsters, stock traders, or any group that decides to go against the majority - by trying to be different, they will ultimately all do the same thing at the same time," said Professor Touboul.
"The reason for that is the time it takes for an individual to register the decisions of others.
"You cannot be aware of what other people decide in real time, it takes a while."
He added that uncovering what causes this paradox "goes beyond finding the best suit to wear this winter."
"[It has] implications in deciphering collective phenomena in economics and finance, where individuals may find an interest in taking positions in opposition to the majority - for instance, selling stocks when others want to buy.
"Applications also extend to the case of neuronal networks with inhibition, where neurons tend to fire when others and silent, and reciprocally."
- Daily Mail
