Social networks
Social networks describe the structure of the relationships that tie us all together. Social networking sites are online platforms that make these relationships explicit, by adding someone as a friend and offer a communication and online activity platform around these relationships.
So when it comes to social network research, the focus is on the relationships people have with each other, and how networks of relationships form and change and affect the people that tie together these networks.
For example, consider the following, how many of your friends did you meet through another friend? This is something social network researchers call triadic closure. If you're friends with Alice, and Alice is friends with Bob, when you become friends with Bob you have closed the triangle. It's one common way that relationships form. It is also a way for groups to become tightly connected entities, when all members of a group have relationships with every other member of the group, they form a commonly known clique.
Another well-known example of social networks is the six-degrees or small world phenomenon. It suggests everyone is connected through a path of relationships that goes through six people on average. In fact, one can measure the distance between any two people as the smallest number of people you would have to go through to connect them.
But what do all of these things have to do with psychology? One way to begin to answer this question is to describe one phenomenon that has received a lot of attention from both fields, social influence.
Psychologists have been studying influence for a long time, dating back at least to the Second World War. This research has asked and answered how people respond to persuasion, how people's opinions change, who and what leads to the biggest attitude change.
Fortunately social network research has been approaching the problem from the other side, looking at the global patterns of influence.
An infected person has contact with other people, who have some probability of getting infected themselves and subsequently passing it on. Marketers have latched on to this model, asserting that when one person adopts something, this can cause someone else they know to also adopt that same thing. This is the basis of word-of-mouth advertising.
Many of the social network models of diffusion ignore the fact that some people really are more persuasive than others. On the other hand, the most charismatic and persuasive individual may have no effect outside of her little circle of friends if none of those friends reach outside of that little clique. The two fields can come together to give us a rich picture of who is really influential, and what really matters when it comes to the spread of beliefs, ideas, and culture.
This is just one area that psychology and social networks intersect. What leads to new relationships? What causes them to end? What's the best way to structure a work group? Who becomes friends with whom, and why? Who's the most popular, and why? Why are some groups of people tight-knit and exclusive, while others are loose and open? These are just some of the questions that both psychology and social network science are trying to answer.
Psychology Today
see mixed signals, six degrees
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