Tag Archives | Reciprocity

Network Evolution and Social Situations

Per Block

Sociological Science, July 5, 2018
10.15195/v5.a18


Studying the evolution of friendship networks has a long tradition in sociology. Multiple micromechanisms underlying friendship formation have been discovered, the most pervasive being reciprocity, transitivity, and homophily. Although each mechanism is studied in depth on its own, their relation to one another is rarely analyzed, and a theoretical framework that integrates research on all of them does not exist. This article introduces a friendship evolution model, which proposes that each micromechanism is related to interactions in different social situations. Based on this model, decreasing returns to embedding in multiple mechanisms are hypothesized. Complete social network data of adolescents and statistical network models are used to test these hypotheses. Results show a consistently negative interaction in line with the formulated model. The consequences of this negative relation between the network evolution mechanisms are explored in a simulation study, which suggests that this is a strong determinant of network-level integration and segregation.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Per Block: Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich
E-mail: per.block@gess.ethz.ch

Acknowledgements: This work greatly benefited from discussions with and advice from Zsofia Boda, James Hollway, Janne Jonsson, Isabel Raabe, Tom Snijders, Christoph Stadtfeld, Christian Steglich, Andras Vörös, as well as comments by the attendees of the Sunbelt Conference in Redondo Beach, the International Network of Analytical Sociologists (INAS) conference in Boston, the Sociology seminar in Groningen, and the Nuffield Network Seminar. This work was partially carried out at the University of Oxford and benefited from a scholarship from Nuffield College.

  • Citation: Block, Per. 2018. “Network Evolution and Social Situations.” Sociological Science 5:402-431.
  • Received: April 30, 2018
  • Accepted: May 16, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a18

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The Social Contagion of Antisocial Behavior

Milena Tsvetkova, Michael W. Macy

Sociological Science, February 4, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a4

Previous research has shown that reciprocity can be contagious when there is no option to repay the benefactor and the recipient instead channels repayment toward strangers. In this study, we test whether retaliation can also be contagious. Extending previous work on “paying it forward,” we tested two mechanisms for the social contagion of antisocial behavior: generalized reciprocity (a victim of antisocial behavior is more likely to pay it forward) and third-party influence (an observer of antisocial behavior is more likely to emulate it). We used an online experiment with randomized trials to test the two hypothesized mechanisms and their interaction by manipulating the extent to which participants experienced and observed antisocial behavior. We found that people are more likely to harm others if they have been harmed and they are less likely to do so if they observe that others do not harm.
Milena Tsvetkova: Department of Sociology, Cornell University  E-mail: mvt9@cornell.edu

Michael W. Macy: Department of Sociology and Department of Information Science, Cornell University  Email: m.macy@cornell.edu

  • Citation: Tsvetkova, Milena, and Michael W. Macy. 2015. “The Social Contagion of Antisocial Behavior.” Sociological Science 2:36-49
  • Received: November 24, 2014
  • Accepted: January 5, 2015
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen,  Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a4

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