When cultural tastes are not neutral but hierarchically matched to social status, people assimilate
themselves to higher status by consuming cultural goods while distinguishing themselves from lower
status by developing new tastes. Extending the Cucker-Smale model for mutual influence among
agents, we examine when and how many cultural classes emerge from continuous distributions of
tastes and what conditions those classes satisfy, through the assimilation-distinction mechanism.
We simulate the models with different initial distributions of tastes (uniform, normal, and chisquare),
given various ranges of two parameters: (1) the strength and (2) the range of distinction
relative to assimilation. Tastes are flocking and cultural classes emerge when the range of assimilation
is much larger than that of distinction. The number of classes increases with the strength of
distinction, whereas the distance between classes equals the range of distinction. Some properties
of emergent classes are mathematically proved. (1) In a two-class system, the stronger distinction,
the larger the upper-class. (2) In a three-class system, the middle-class is necessarily larger than
the lower-class and likely larger than the upper-class. (3) A three-class system cannot emerge if
distinction is weaker than assimilation. These properties are universal and do not depend on the
initial distribution of cultural tastes. This independence predicts homogeneous cultural classes
emerging across different social conditions. Also, the cultural middle-class as the largest group may
explain why subjective class-consciousness is often higher than objective position. Lastly, unless
assimilating efforts can reach an infinite range, there emerges a cultural outcast at the lowest end
of the cultural hierarchy.