Social contagion

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A visualization of social network analysis (SNA). In the 21st century, much of the study of social contagion involves online networks and communities. Social Network Analysis Visualization.png
A visualization of social network analysis (SNA). In the 21st century, much of the study of social contagion involves online networks and communities.

Social contagion involves behaviour, emotions, or conditions spreading spontaneously through a group or network. The phenomenon has been discussed by social scientists since the late 19th century, although much work on the subject was based on unclear or even contradictory conceptions of what social contagion is, so exact definitions vary. Some scholars include the unplanned spread of ideas through a population as social contagion, though others prefer to class that as memetics. Generally social contagion is understood to be separate from the collective behaviour which results from a direct attempt to exert social influence.

Contents

Two broad divisions of social contagion are behavioural contagion and emotional contagion. The study of social contagion has intensified in the 21st century. Much recent work involves academics from social psychology, sociology, and network science investigating online social networks. Studies in the 20th century typically focused on negative effects such as violent mob behaviour, whereas those of the 21st century, while sometimes looking at harmful effects, have often focused on relatively neutral contagion such as influence on shopping choices, and even on positive effects like the tendency for people to take action on climate change once a sufficient number of their neighbours do.

History

Gustave Le Bon, who first discussed behavioural contagion in 1895. Gustave Le Bon.jpg
Gustave Le Bon, who first discussed behavioural contagion in 1895.

Metaphoric use connecting the concept of infection with imitation ( mimesis ) dates back at least to Plato, and continued into medieval and early modern literature. The term "behavioural contagion" was first introduced into modern scholarship by Gustave Le Bon in his 1895 book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind . Further scholarly works on the subject were at first released slowly, only one or two a decade until the 1950s. Herbert Blumer was the first to specifically use the term "social contagion”, in his 1939 paper on collective behavior, where he gave the dancing mania of the middle ages as a prominent example. From the 1950s, studies of social contagion began to investigate the phenomena empirically, and became more frequent. There was no widely shared definition of social contagion in the 20th century however, so many of the studies had little in common. In 1993, David A. Levy and Paul R. Nail published a review where they stated that social contagion captures the broadest sense of the phenomena, as opposed to subtypes like behavioural or emotional contagion. In a 1998 review, Paul Marsden suggested that social contagion is a similar phenomena to memetics, a field of study inspired by Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene . Marsden suggested that the two fields could be complementary, in the sense that work on social contagion largely lacked a coherent theory, but contained much evidence based analyses. Whereas memetics was rich in theory but lacking on the empirical side. From the 1990s and into the 21st century, interest in social contagion grew rapidly, based in part on cross fertilisation with the then emerging field of network science, especially its application to the internet. [1] [2] [3]

Definition

Scholars have long reported that the study of social contagion has suffered from the lack of a widely accepted and precise definition. Definitions have often, though not always, classified social contagion as a method of transmission that does not rely on a direct intent to influence. Other definitions have suggested that social contagion involves spontaneous imitation of others, rather than being based on conscious decisions. [note 1] In their 1993 review, Levy and Nail proposed that social contagion should be defined as the spread of affect, attitude or behaviour "where the recipient does not perceive an intentional influence attempt on the part of the initiator". [1] [3] [2] [4]

Typology

Forms of social contagion have been studied with different social species, such as gorillas. Kbnpsilverbackandchild.jpg
Forms of social contagion have been studied with different social species, such as gorillas.

Various typologies have been proposed for social contagion. [1] [2] [5]

By what is being transmitted

Social contagion can be broadly split into behavioural contagion and emotional contagion. The spread of ideas is sometimes considered a third broad category, though that is often considered part of memetics. Paul Marsden has said behavioural contagion can be split into six subcategories: hysterical contagions, deliberate self-harm contagions, contagions of aggression, rule violation contagions, consumer behaviour contagions, and financial contagions. [2] [5] [3]

By causal pathway

Three main causes of social contagion have been proposed: disinhibitory contagion, echo contagion, and hysterical contagion. [1] Disinhibitory contagion involves a type of behaviour that the person already has some desire to engage in, but from which normally they would refrain due to a desire to comply with social norms. When they witness others in the crowd performing the behaviour, this can break the inhibitory effect. [1] Echo contagion represents the spontaneous imitation of a behaviour, or transition into conformance with an emotional state shared by others. [1] Hysterical contagion represents the unwanted transmission of a behaviour, emotion or affect among a group by unknown means. Unlike with echo or disinhibitory contagion, what is being transmitted may in no way be desirable or attractive, yet it transmits anyway. [1]

By cardinality of exposure

Social contagion can be examined with threshold models based on how much exposure an individual needs before transmission of a behaviour or emotion occurs. Some models assume an individual needs to be convinced by a fraction of their social contacts above a given threshold to adopt a novel behaviour. [6] Therefore, the number of exposures will not increase chances of contagion unless the number of source exposures pass a certain threshold. The threshold value can divide contagion processes to two types: simple contagion and complex contagion. [7] [8] In simple contagion, an individual only needs a single exposure to the new behaviour. For instance, cars travel in groups on a two-lane highway since the car in each cluster travels at a slower speed than the car behind it. This relative speed spreads through other cars who slow down to match the speed of the car in front. [6] In complex contagion, the individual needs to be in contact with two or more sources exhibiting the novel behaviour. [9] This is when copying behaviours needs reinforcement or encouragement from multiple sources. Multiple sources, especially close friends, can make imitation legitimate, credible and worthwhile due to collective effort put in. Examples of complex contagions include a New York University School of Business study in California which found that households were more likely to install solar panels in neighborhoods that already had them, and that the rate of installation increases with more and more installations, creating a chain reaction that added up to a significant increase in solar adoption. [10] Other examples can be copying risky behaviour or joining social movements and riots. [7]

Positive contagions

Much early work on social contagion looked only at harmful effects, in keeping with the infectious disease metaphor. Yet towards the end of the 20th century, and especially in the 21st, scholars began to look at neutral and positive contagion. For example, the rippling of happiness through a social network, up to three degrees of separation from the initiator. The contagion effect of happiness is also strongly influenced by physical proximity. Research based on the Framingham Heart Study found that if one has a happy friend living no more than a mile away, they are 25% more likely to be happy, whereas one is 34% more likely to be happy with a happy next-door neighbour. [11] Work has been done to understand social contagion as a way to encourage positive behaviour, as a possible complement to nudge theory. It has been suggested as a way to assist in the rehabilitation of criminals and drug addicts, and as something that can encourage the adoption of climate friendly behaviour. Such as the increased tendency to install solar panels on one's personal home once a portion of one's neighbours have already done so. [12] [13] [14]

Mental health

Inside the scientific community the influence of social contagion of mental disorders like anxiety and depression is a topic of debate. [15]

Claims about social contagion of gender dysphoria have led to a rapid-onset gender dysphoria controversy.

Criticism

The field of social contagion has been repeatedly criticized for lacking a clear and widely accepted definition, even though any area of research is marked by definitional variation, and for sometimes involving work that does not distinguish between contagion and other forms of social influence, like command and compliance, or from the otherwise also diffuse concept of homophily. [4] In social network analysis and related network science fields, the contagion metaphor has been described as potentially misleading in various ways. For example, an actual virus can affect someone after a single exposure, whereas typically with social contagion, people need several exposures before adopting the new behavior or emotion. [16] Some scholars (e.g., Ralph H. Turner) have suggested that certain types of collective behaviour are better understood by emergent norm theory or convergence theory, rather than by social contagion. [2]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Though some definitions have stated that contagion is distinct from imitation, see Levy and Nail (1993).

Related Research Articles

A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. In popular language, a meme may refer to an Internet meme, typically an image, that is remixed, copied, and circulated in a shared cultural experience online.

Memetics is a theory of the evolution of culture based on Darwinian principles with the meme as the unit of culture. The term "meme" was coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, to illustrate the principle that he later called "Universal Darwinism". All evolutionary processes depend on information being copied, varied, and selected, a process also known as variation with selective retention. The information that is copied is called the replicator, and genes are the replicator for biological evolution. Dawkins proposed that the same process drives cultural evolution, and he called this second replicator the "meme". He gave as examples, tunes, catchphrases, fashions, and technologies. Like genes, memes are selfish replicators and have causal efficacy; in other words, their properties influence their chances of being copied and passed on. Some succeed because they are valuable or useful to their human hosts while others are more like viruses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social norm</span> Informal understanding of acceptable conduct

Social norms are shared standards of acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into rules and laws. Social normative influences or social norms, are deemed to be powerful drivers of human behavioural changes and well organized and incorporated by major theories which explain human behaviour. Institutions are composed of multiple norms. Norms are shared social beliefs about behavior; thus, they are distinct from "ideas", "attitudes", and "values", which can be held privately, and which do not necessarily concern behavior. Norms are contingent on context, social group, and historical circumstances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attitude (psychology)</span> Concept in psychology and communication studies

An attitude "is a summary evaluation of an object of thought. An attitude object can be anything a person discriminates or holds in mind." Attitudes include beliefs (cognition), emotional responses (affect) and behavioral tendencies. In the classical definition an attitude is persistent, while in more contemporary conceptualizations, attitudes may vary depending upon situations, context, or moods.

Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. Typically social influence results from a specific action, command, or request, but people also alter their attitudes and behaviors in response to what they perceive others might do or think. In 1958, Harvard psychologist Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence.

  1. Compliance is when people appear to agree with others but actually keep their dissenting opinions private.
  2. Identification is when people are influenced by someone who is liked and respected, such as a famous celebrity.
  3. Internalization is when people accept a belief or behavior and agree both publicly and privately.

The expression collective behavior was first used by Franklin Henry Giddings and employed later by Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Herbert Blumer, Ralph H. Turner and Lewis Killian, and Neil Smelser to refer to social processes and events which do not reflect existing social structure, but which emerge in a "spontaneous" way. Use of the term has been expanded to include reference to cells, social animals like birds and fish, and insects including ants. Collective behavior takes many forms but generally violates societal norms. Collective behavior can be tremendously destructive, as with riots or mob violence, silly, as with fads, or anywhere in between. Collective behavior is always driven by group dynamics, encouraging people to engage in acts they might consider unthinkable under typical social circumstances.

Mark Sanford Granovetter is an American sociologist and professor at Stanford University. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of information in social networks known as The Strength of Weak Ties (1973). In 2014 Granovetter was named a Citation Laureate by Thomson Reuters and added to that organization’s list of predicted Nobel Prize winners in economics. Data from the Web of Science show that Granovetter has written both the first and third most cited sociology articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diffusion of innovations</span> Theory on how and why new ideas spread

Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. The theory was popularized by Everett Rogers in his book Diffusion of Innovations, first published in 1962. Rogers argues that diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated thorough certain channels over time among the participants in a social system. The origins of the diffusion of innovations theory are varied and span multiple disciplines.

A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an organism acts and when the organism observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Mirror neurons are not always physiologically distinct from other types of neurons in the brain; their main differentiating factor is their response patterns. By this definition, such neurons have been directly observed in humans and primate species, and in birds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homophily</span> Process by which people befriend similar people

Homophily is a concept in sociology describing the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, as in the proverb "birds of a feather flock together". The presence of homophily has been discovered in a vast array of network studies: over 100 studies have observed homophily in some form or another, and they establish that similarity is associated with connection. The categories on which homophily occurs include age, gender, class, and organizational role.

The behavioural sciences explore the cognitive processes within organisms and the behavioural interactions between organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behaviour through naturalistic observation, controlled scientific experimentation and mathematical modeling. It attempts to accomplish legitimate, objective conclusions through rigorous formulations and observation. Examples of behavioural sciences include psychology, psychobiology, criminology, anthropology, sociology, economics, and cognitive science. Generally, behavioural science primarily seeks to generalise about human behaviour as it relates to society and its impact on society as a whole.

Memetic engineering, also meme engineering, is a term developed by Leveious Rolando, John Sokol, and Gibron Burchett based on Richard Dawkins' theory of memes.

Emotional contagion is a form of social contagion that involves the spontaneous spread of emotions and related behaviors. Such emotional convergence can happen from one person to another, or in a larger group. Emotions can be shared across individuals in many ways, both implicitly or explicitly. For instance, conscious reasoning, analysis, and imagination have all been found to contribute to the phenomenon. The behaviour has been found in humans, other primates, dogs, and chickens.

Cultural selection theory is the study of cultural change modelled on theories of evolutionary biology. Cultural selection theory has so far never been a separate discipline. However it has been proposed that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and "the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution". In addition to Darwin's work the term historically covers a diverse range of theories from both the sciences and the humanities including those of Lamark, politics and economics e.g. Bagehot, anthropology e.g. Edward B. Tylor, literature e.g. Ferdinand Brunetière, evolutionary ethics e.g. Leslie Stephen, sociology e.g. Albert Keller, anthropology e.g. Bronislaw Malinowski, Biosciences e.g. Alex Mesoudi, geography e.g. Richard Ormrod, sociobiology and biodiversity e.g. E.O. Wilson, computer programming e.g. Richard Brodie, and other fields e.g. Neoevolutionism, and Evolutionary archaeology.

Behavioral contagion is a form of social contagion involving the spread of behavior through a group. It refers to the propensity for a person to copy a certain behavior of others who are either in the vicinity, or whom they have been exposed to. The term was originally used by Gustave Le Bon in his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind to explain undesirable aspects of behavior of people in crowds. In the digital age, behavioral contagion is also concerned with the spread of online behavior and information. A variety of behavioral contagion mechanisms were incorporated in models of collective human behavior.

Complex contagion is the phenomenon in social networks in which multiple sources of exposure to an innovation are required before an individual adopts the change of behavior. It differs from simple contagion in that unlike a disease, it may not be possible for the innovation to spread after only one incident of contact with an infected neighbor. The spread of complex contagion across a network of people may depend on many social and economic factors; for instance, how many of one's friends adopt the new idea as well as how many of them cannot influence the individual, as well as their own disposition in embracing change.

Three Degrees of Influence is a theory in the realm of social networks, proposed by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler in 2007. It has since been explored by scientists in numerous disciplines using diverse statistical, psychological, sociological, and biological approaches.

Social determinism is the theory that social interactions alone determine individual behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Damon Centola</span> Researcher in network science and related at the University of Pennsylvania

Damon Centola is a sociologist and the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony D. Sampson</span> British critical theorist (born 1964)

Tony D. Sampson is a British academic author who writes about philosophies of affect, digital media cultures and labour, marketing power, design/brand thinking, social and immersive user experiences and neurocultures. He is best known for his widely cited and debated academic publications on virality, network contagion and neuroculture. This work is influenced by the 19th century French sociologist, Gabriel Tarde and concerns contemporary analyses of viral phenomena and affective and emotional contagion on the Internet. In 2017 Sampson published The Assemblage Brain, a book about the culture of the affective brain explored through digital media, the neurosciences, business (marketing), cybernetics and political power. His most recent publication, A Sleepwalker's Guide to Social Media (2020), explores the power dynamic of a post-Cambridge Analytica social media environment wherein the marketing logic of virality/growth helps to inflame contagions of race hate, posing a threat to democracy.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 David A. Levy , Paul R. Nail (1993). "Contagion: A Theoretical and Empirical Review and Reconceptualization". Genetic Social and General Psychology Monographs . 119 (2): 233–84. PMID   8405969.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Paul Marsden (1998). "Memetics and Social Contagion: Two Sides of the Same Coin?". Journal of Memetics. 2 (2): 171–185.
  3. 1 2 3 Peta Michell (2012). "1, 3". Contagious Metaphor. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN   978-1472521620.
  4. 1 2 Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, Andrew C. Thomas (2011). "Homophily and Contagion Are Generically Confounded in Observational Social Network Studies". Sociological Methods & Research . 40 (2): 211–239. doi:10.1177/0049124111404820. PMC   3328971 . PMID   22523436.
  5. 1 2 Stephen G. Harkins; Kipling D. Williams; Jerry M. Burger, eds. (2017). "7 , 23". The Oxford Handbook of Social Influence. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0199859870.
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  8. ↑ Böttcher, L.; Nagler, J.; Herrmann, H. J. (23 February 2017). "Critical Behaviors in Contagion Dynamics". Physical Review Letters. 118 (8): 088301. arXiv: 1701.08988 . Bibcode:2017PhRvL.118h8301B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.088301. PMC   7219437 . PMID   28282207.
  9. ↑ Iacopini, Iacopo; Petri, Giovanni; Barrat, Alain; Latora, Vito (2019). "Simplicial models of social contagion". Nature Communications. 10 (1): 2485. arXiv: 1810.07031 . Bibcode:2019NatCo..10.2485I. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10431-6. PMC   6554271 . PMID   31171784.
  10. ↑ Einhorn, Laura. "Normative Social Influence on Meat Consumption". MPG.PuRe. Max Planck Society. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  11. ↑ Robin Dunbar; Danilo Bzdok (2020). "The Neurobiology of Social Distance". Trends in Cognitive Sciences . 24 (9): 717–733. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.016 . PMC   7266757 . PMID   32561254.
  12. ↑ David Best (2019). "8, passim". Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: The Role of the Social Contagion of Hope. Policy Press. ISBN   978-1-4473-4930-3.
  13. ↑ Nicholas Christakis; James H. Fowler (2013). "Social contagion theory: examining dynamic social networks and human behavior". Statistics in Medicine . 32 (4): 556–577. doi:10.1002/sim.5408. PMC   3830455 . PMID   22711416.
  14. ↑ Per Espen Stoknes (September 2017). How to transform apocalypse fatigue into action on global warming. TED (conference) . Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  15. ↑ Eisenberg, Daniel; Golberstein, Ezra; Whitlock, Janis L.; Downs, Marilyn F. (August 2013). "SOCIAL CONTAGION OF MENTAL HEALTH: EVIDENCE FROM COLLEGE ROOMMATES: CONTAGION OF MENTAL HEALTH". Health Economics. 22 (8) (published 11 October 2012): 965–986. doi:10.1002/hec.2873. PMC   4381550 . PMID   23055446.
  16. ↑ Ryan Light and James Moody, ed. (2021). "16". The Oxford Handbook of Social Networks. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0190251765.

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