Social contagion is a powerful force. People copy thoughts, feelings, & actions of those to whom they are connected. Understanding social network structure & function makes it possible to use social contagion to intervene in the world to improve human welfare. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/ - ThreadSky

nachristakis.bsky.social • 90 days ago

Social contagion is a powerful force.

People copy thoughts, feelings, & actions of those to whom they are connected. Understanding social network structure & function makes it possible to use social contagion to intervene in the world to improve human welfare. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi5147 1/

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nachristakis.bsky.social•90 days ago

In a large randomized controlled field trial in 24,702 people in 176 isolated villages in Honduras, published in
@science.org on May 3, 2024, we showed how social contagion can be used to improve diverse outcomes. https://science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi5147 #HNL #EconSky 2/

nachristakis.bsky.social•90 days ago

To exploit social contagion, tools are needed to efficiently identify individuals who are better able to initiate cascades. To be maximally useful, such tools should be deployable *without* having to actually map face-to-face social network interactions. https://science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi5147 3/

nachristakis.bsky.social•90 days ago

Distinctly, a better understanding of the threshold percentage of a population that must be seeded with an intervention to maximally induce social contagion is also desirable.

Maybe reaching 20% of people is as good as reaching 100%? 4/

nachristakis.bsky.social•90 days ago

In this RCT of social contagion, we deployed a proven 22-month maternal and child health intervention, but we experimentally manipulated the fraction of people in each village who got the intervention and also how those people were chosen. 5/

nachristakis.bsky.social•90 days ago

Could we easily identify a subset of structurally influential people who could maximize social contagion to people we ourselves did not contact with the intervention? https://science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi5147 6/

nachristakis.bsky.social•90 days ago

Our approach relies on a basic mathematical fact about human social networks, known as the friendship paradox, which states that “your friends have more friends than you do.”

Here is a TED Talk about this idea: https://ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_how_social_networks_predict_epidemics 7/

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