Emotion can spread rapidly through large crowds, as the massive social proof leads us into extreme states. Up to 75 percent of employees report they have stolen from their employers at least once, and half of those have stolen as least twice mcgurn, 1988. Behavioral contagion or social contagion is a type of social influence. Pdf the social contagion of antisocial behavior researchgate. Extending previous work on paying it forward, we tested two mechanisms for the social contagion of antisocial behavior. Two classes of network models are used to reanalyze a sociological classic often cited as evidence of social contagion in the diffusion of technological innovation. Contagion theory gustave le bon, a french social psychologist born in 1841, is considered to be the founder of crowd psychology, which explains why people do the things they do in groups. General theory and applications to social contagion kameron decker harris, christopher m. It refers to the propensity for a person to copy a certain behavior of others who are either in. The influence of social contagion within education. Examining dynamic social networks and human behavior a. Convergence theory presumes that as nations move from the early stages of industrialization toward becoming fully industrialized, they begin to resemble other industrialized societies in terms of societal norms and technology.
This theory holds that the anonymous nature of collectivities can engender a restraint reduction in individuals. Kirsch, the influence of social contagion and technology on epidemic nonsuicidal selfinjury, 2012. Along with other scholars, we are working to develop new methods for identifying causal effects using social network data, and we believe that. The theory is first developed by gustave le bon in his book called the crowd. The simple rules of social contagion scientific reports. 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 second case of social contagion features a public utilities company that reported higherthanusual workplace satisfaction, employee commitment, and personal accountability. Social contagion effects can also occur when people believe they have been infected by a disease.
We describe the methods we have employed and the assumptions they have entailed to examine several datasets with complementary strengths and weak. It outlined that some social theories can in fact be very relevant within organizational environments. Instances of widely studied collective behaviors throughout the last century include mob panics and violence, organization of social move. Primitive emotional contagion scholars from a variety of disciplinesneuroscience, biology, social psychology, sociology, and lifespan psychologyhave proposed that primitive emotional contagion is of critical importance in understanding human cognition, emotion, and behavior. With little analysis or forethought, more people resp. Nov 03, 20 a few days ago i read a particularly interesting article in regards to the social contagion theory and leadership within organizations. Detecting emotional contagion in massive social networks.
Sinan arals two areas of interest are behavioral contagions and causality. His theories were improved by sociologist robert park and later by herbert. Ive read a lot of pages on social contagion, and i cant stop thinking of how our surroundings can manipulate us. He expressed contagion effect on social and political opinions. The spread of ideas, attitudes, or behaviour patterns in a group through imitation and conformity. A second explanation derives from social network theory which demonstrates how individual speakers are members of social networks which have the power to enforce group norms milroy 1980. This idea is supported by network analysis of population data that shows interconnected. With data from millions of facebook users, we show that rainfall directly influences the emotional content of their status messages, and it also. As a historian and philosopher his works reflected more of political and social opinions. An article with a social contagion contest is a perfect way to show why we need not agree with a negative social contagion, but be influenced by a positive one.
The simple rules of social contagion scientific reports nature. The notion of how something becomes popular is very relevant to the concept of social contagion. A simple model of global cascades on random networks. Cornell university 2011 social contagion is a subset of contagion which includes all social phenomena that can and do spread via social networks.
The theory is most closely associated with three writers. Pdf a social network contagion theory of risk perception. The second factor was then examined through the analysis of a mother jones mass shooting archive. Rodgers and rowe 1993 introduced the social contagion theory of adolescent sexual behavior as a probabilistic model in which transmission of the behavior i.
One is social contagion theory that suggests national messaging can amplify a campaign by normalising behaviour and turning it into a movement i. We describe the methods we have employed and the assumptions they have entailed in order to examine several datasets with complementary strengths and weaknesses, including the framingham heart study, the national longitudinal study of adolescent health, and other observational and experimental datasets that we. The spread of new ideas and practices is often argued to be contingent on the way in which social structure brings people together. He believes that if we can understand how behavior is spread in a population, theres the potential to promote good. Pdf previous research has shown that reciprocity can be contagious when there is no. In this way, we attempt to capture important aspects of fashions and societal trends. The exchange of ideas, beliefs, sentiments and behaviour in networks can be better. Social contagion is the spread of affect or behavior from person to person and among larger groups. Fowler3,41 department of medicine and department of health care policy, harvard medical school, boston, ma 021152 department of sociology, faculty of arts and sciences, harvard university, cambridge, ma 028, usa3 division of. Examining dynamic social networks and human behavior. Apr 07, 20 psychology definition of behavioral contagion. Mass shootings and the media contagion effect jennifer.
Social network theory the study of how people, organizations, or groups interact with others inside their network and its analysis have been a recent focus for public health issues. Two classes of network models are used to reanalyze a sociological classic often cited as evidence of social contagion in the diffusion of technological. We describe the methods we have employed and the assumptions they have entailed to examine several datasets with complementary strengths and weaknesses, including the framingham heart study, the national longitudinal study of adolescent health, and other observational and experimental datasets that we. He just explained crowd influence but not crowds influence on individuals, which was later added by robert park and herbert blumer. Social contagion is the spread of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors from person to person and among larger groups as affected by shared information and mimicry. The dynamics of social contagion vladimir barash, ph. This sense of anonymity is held to cause a reduction. Happiness and other emotions spread between people in direct contact, but it is unclear whether massive online social networks also contribute to this spread. In the case of language, social network theory predicts that group pressures will enforce linguistic norms. Fowler3,4 1department of medicine and department of health care policy, harvard medical school. Social contagion makes it easy to spread fear and hate. A theoretical model 245 march 29april 1, 2007, baltimore, maryland refers in part to the ways in which individuals gather and behave in groups. We compare our theory to extensive simulations of this limited imitation contagion model on poisson random graphs.
Despite awareness of the critical role of social contagion in influencing classroom climate, these processes have attracted surprisingly little empirical attention in the field. The contagion theory was proposed at first by gustave le bon through a research and a book based on the research called the crowd. We describe the methods we have employed and the assumptions they have entailed to examine several datasets with complementary st. Social movement theory overheads classical formulations. People in collective gatherings or crowds, many of which are sponsored by social movements, are portrayed as behaving uniformly, intensely, and often in a. Social contagion theory and information literacy dissemination. Contagion theory looks at the social events and conditions that make crowd behavior possible. The article concludes by proposing a memetic theory of social contagion, arguing that social contagion research and memetics are indeed two sides of the same social epidemiological coin, and ends with a call for their synthesis into a comprehensive body of theoretically informed research. Contagion theory is similar to many other communication and social theories like symbolic interaction theory, gatekeeping theory, hypodermic needle theory, network theory, cartesian rational action theory, etc. And well before social media, revolutionaries from the civil rights movement in. Wuhan is known colloquially as one of the four furnaces.
Convergence theory definition, discussion and examples. We describe the methods we have employed and the assumptions they have entailed to examine several datasets with complementary strengths and weaknesses, including the framingham heart. The dates and the frequency of shootings were examined in particular in order to reveal patterns of contagion. Group emotional contagion, the transfer of moods among people in a group, and its influence on work group dynamics was examined in a laboratory study of managerial decision making using multiple, convergent measures of mood, individual attitudes, behavior, and grouplevel dynamics. This explains much of crowd behavior, where normal people act in ways they may later deeply regret. Danforth, and peter sheridan dodds department of mathematics and statistics, vermont advanced computing core, vermont complex systems center. The social contagion of antisocial behavior sociological. Examining dynamic social networks and human behavior nicholas a. We describe the methods we have employed and the assumptions they have entailed to examine several datasets with complementary strengths and weaknesses, including the framingham. Thomas july 9, 2012 abstract i re ect on the statistical methods of the christakisfowler studies on networkbased contagion of traits by checking the sensitivity of these kinds of results to various alternate. Social network theory an overview sciencedirect topics. We describe the methods we have employed and the assumptions they have entailed to examine several datasets with complementary strengths and weaknesses, including the framingham heart study, the national longitudinal study of adolescent health, and other observational and experimental datasets that we and others have collected. That is, the adoption at the population level of gun violence was facilitated. A social contagion model of organizational misbehavior one can open a newspaper on almost any given day and find reports of employees or even entire organizations that have engaged in misbehavior.
1565 1563 244 1015 628 390 1611 1197 276 67 1614 1185 224 1290 1589 666 125 1121 504 227 396 846 729 916 1480 129 235 1465 403 382 1283 1194 919 910