DIFFUSION OF BEHAVIOR

Damon’s study showed that complex contagions (like behavior change) spread more quickly in Large World networks, even though information can spread more quickly through weak ties and small world networks. Across six independent trials of the experiment, it appeared that: more people adopted the behavior in clustered networks and there was faster diffusion in clustered network. This is counter to the intuition of the past 40 years that if people have more exposure to each other (weak ties in the randomized network), then information and behaviors will spread more quickly. This study shows that not everything spreads like a virus, and in fact, behaviors spread more quickly through clustered networks because of social reinforcement. Additionally, it found that more reinforcement from more people led to increased rates of adoption behavior. For further reading, click here.