How Behavior Spreads ：The Science of Complex Contagions ( Princeton Analytical Sociology Series )

Publication subTitle ：The Science of Complex Contagions

Publication series ： Princeton Analytical Sociology Series

Author： Centola Damon

Publisher： Princeton University Press‎

Publication year： 2018

E-ISBN: 9781400890095

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780691175317

Subject： C912.6 Social psychology and social behavior

Keyword：行为主义派,社会学,文化理论,社会科学理论与方法论

Language： ENG

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Description

A new, counterintuitive theory for how social networks influence the spread of behavior

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 h