Whether it’s getting a flu shot, a mammogram, or a less-calorie laden entrée, social behavior has a lot to do with health matters. A recent paper said that it matters whether individuals get their information largely from social network clusters which offer a multiplicity of reinforcing behaviors, or ties to information at a distance.
The author, Damon Centola, was quoted as saying that this effect should make public health officials sit up and take notice. What are called clustered networks create a system that spreads information and behavior somewhat the way that disease does.
What is different is that disease spreads from individual to individual, in what is called simple contagion. But preventing disease takes reinforcing behavior from a social network, which is called a complex contagion.
Centola suggests that public promotions for prevention gain in their impact when they are aimed at groups, neighborhoods, and the larger communities that act on their members as clustered networks.
This was the result of six test trial runs over a few weeks. The aim was to see which groups of people registered for an online health website that rated health resources.
The clustered networks won out (54%) over the networks that were organized over what are called long ties, that is, ties at a distance (38%). Importantly, the rate of positive change—they registered—had momentum, over four times as fast in the clustered networks.
Another conclusion: People were more likely to be regular participants if their buddies were also registered. Those with three friends in the website forum were 40% more likely to make another visit, as opposed to 30% with two friends in it, and 15% with only one friend in it.
The paper, The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment, was published in the September 3, 2010, issue of Science. Damon Centola is an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
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