How Behavior Spreads: The Science Of Complex Contagions

Description

New social movements, technologies, and public-health initiatives often struggle to take off, yet many diseases disperse rapidly without issue. Can the lessons learned from the viral diffusion of diseases be used to improve the spread of beneficial behaviors and innovations? In How Behavior Spreads, Damon Centola presents over a decade of original research examining how changes in societal behavior — in voting, health, technology, and finance—occur and the ways social networks can be used to influence how they propagate. Centola’s startling findings show that the same conditions accelerating the viral expansion of an epidemic unexpectedly inhibit the spread of behaviors. While it is commonly believed that “weak ties”—long-distance connections linking acquaintances—lead to the quicker spread of behaviors, in fact the exact opposite holds true. Centola demonstrates how the most well-known, intuitive ideas about social networks have caused past diffusion efforts to fail, and how such efforts might succeed in the future. Pioneering the use of Web-based methods to understand how changes in people’s social networks alter their behaviors, Centola illustrates the ways in which these insights can be applied to solve countless problems of organizational change, cultural evolution, and social innovation. His findings offer important lessons for public health workers, entrepreneurs, and activists looking to harness networks for social change. Practical and informative, How Behavior Spreads is a must-read for anyone interested in how the theory of social networks can transform our world. Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Preface......Page 10 Chapter 1. Introduction......Page 14 PART I. THEORY......Page 24 Chapter 2. Understanding Diffusion......Page 26 Chapter 3. The Theory of Complex Contagions......Page 47 Chapter 4. A Social Experiment on the Internet......Page 76 PART II. APPLICATIONS......Page 98 Introduction to Part II......Page 100 Chapter 5. Complex Contagions in Other Contexts......Page 102 Chapter 6. Diffusing Innovations That Face Opposition......Page 109 Chapter 7. Diffusing Change in Organizations......Page 122 PART III. SOCIAL DESIGN......Page 148 Introduction to Part III......Page 150 Chapter 8. Designing Social Networks for Diffusion......Page 155 Chapter 9. Creating Social Contexts for Behavior Change......Page 168 PART IV. CONCLUSIONS......Page 184 Chapter 10. Conclusion......Page 186 Epilogue: Experimental Sociology......Page 192 Appendix A: The Ethics of Social Design......Page 204 Appendix B: Methods of Computational Social Science......Page 212 Appendix C: Technical Appendix for Models......Page 218 Acknowledgments......Page 234 Notes......Page 238 References......Page 274 Index......Page 304