Diffusion Processes and Fertility Transition Selected Perspectives (2001) / Chapter Skim
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6 Learning and Using New Ideas: A Sociocognitive Perspective
6 Learning and Using New Ideas: A Sociocognitive Perspective
Pages 179-207
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From page 179... ...
However, the reality is that individuals acquire and use information within networks composed of multiple types of nodes and organized through a multiplex of relations. At the node level, cognitive constraints on the way individuals process information Kathleen CarIey is professor of sociology at Carnegie Mellon University.
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From page 180... ...
The second form of this argument states that humans deviate in fairly systematic ways from the prescriptions of expected utility theory (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974; Ross et al., 1977; Kahneman et al., 1982~. Research following both of these paradigmatic arguments is informing our understanding of how individuals acquire and use information.
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From page 181... ...
In other words, individuals seek out obvious indicators of what they think should be causing some outcome and use such cues to make predictions about others. From an information diffusion perspective, this means that individuals may incorrectly assume that the diffusion of a new birth control technique may have various beneficial or deleterious effects simply because of accidental temporal correlations.
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From page 182... ...
Numerous empirical studies provide empirical evidence linking belief change to message content. Some studies suggest that more established beliefs are more difficult to change (Cantril, 1946; Anderson and Hovland, 1957; Hovland, 1972; Danes et al., 1984~.
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From page 183... ...
Let us consider four of these: false consensus, representativeness, availability, and false uniqueness. The false consensus bias refers to the fact that most individuals tend to believe that others are like themselves (Dawes and Mulford, 1996; Dawes, 1989, 1990; Orbell and Dawes, 1993~.
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From page 184... ...
Collectively, this work suggests that individual differences and the context are both important determinants of how individuals acquire and use information when faced with uncertainty. Cognitive biases, personal characteristics, and various sources of uncertainty combine to affect the way in which individuals use the information they acquire (Fischoff et al., 1981; MacCrimmon and Wehrung, 1986~.
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From page 185... ...
This work has had a wide range. Three different issues that have been addressed are particularly important from a diffusion perspective: group think, distributed cognition, and transactive memory.
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SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND INFORMATION Individual cognition is an important determinant of the way in which individuals acquire and use information. However, as hinted at by the work on transactive memory, cognition is not the sole determinant of
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This point is eloquently made by the decades of research on social structure that has repeatedly demonstrated that an individual's beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and actions are as much a function of who is known as it is of what is known and that the underlying social structure is critical to the diffusion process (Rapoport, 1953; Katz, 1961; Rogers, 1995~. This research has led to a more thorough understanding of the way in which the underlying social network influences individual, group, organizational, and community behavior (Wellman and Berkowitz, 1988; Wellman, 1997~.
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From page 188... ...
In other words, social networks have both a social learning and a social influence effect (Montgomery and Casterline, 1996~. Social learning involves the acquisition of information from others.
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Consequently, although network position is perhaps the primary determinant of what information the individual acquires, it is only one of the determinants of how the individual uses that information and what actions are subsequently taken. In terms of information usage, a variety of factors are critical, including personal characteristics, cognitive processing abilities and biases, the individual's network position, the individual's perception of his or her network, and the consequent influence of others on one's actions.
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From page 190... ...
Individuals who are under stress tend to drop from their social network individuals with whom they have less in common and are more weakly tied (Behrens, 1997~. An important source of change in underlying social networks is change in the distribution of information.
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Perhaps the most important feature of the new telecommunication technologies is that they are a source of both information and social support (Hiltz and Wellman, 1997~. New communication technologies can have substantial social, and even psychological, consequences as they alter the way in which individuals acquire and use new information (see, for example, Price, 1965b; Rice, 1984; Sproull and Kiesler, 1991~.
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From page 192... ...
Computational multiagent models using spatial positioning now can be used to develop veridical theories of the impact of location on information diffusion and choice. Further, the new Geographic Information Systems may ultimately enable analyses such as that conducted by Entwisle et al.
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The work in this area tends to focus on diffusion in one of two ways: linking individuals' differences and social position or linking culture and social structure. Individual Difference Perspectives Numerous empirical studies demonstrate that social pressure influences individuals' attitudes.
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Computer simulations of groups jointly working, exchanging information, and communicating are used to explore how individualized cognition and connections among individuals can work together to lead to the emergence of social change, new social structures, and social cognition. As individuals interact and exchange ideas, beliefs, and attitudes, the underlying sociocultural environment changes.
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From page 195... ...
A consequence is that very minute initial differences in the underlying sociocultural configurations may facilitate or hinder information diffusion and consensus formation. Communication technologies affect which sociocultural configurations best facilitate information diffusion and consensus formation, because they affect the properties of the actor and the way in which the actor can engage others in the exchange of information.
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From page 196... ...
And finally, once the innovation has taken hold across the society, it is virtually impossible for the preinnovation state to recover dominance in the organization, even if it begins with the same structural conditions that the innovators enjoyed. TOWARD A SOCIOCOGNITIVE APPROACH TO INFORMATION DIFFUSION Communication theorists typically argue that the individual who receives a message changes his or her attitude toward both the subject of the message and the individual from whom he or she receives the message as a function of the message (Hunter et al., 1984~.
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From page 197... ...
Thus policies seeking to aid or inhibit the diffusion of particular information need to consider not just the foibles of human cognition, not just the underlying social networks of the relevant individuals, but also the basic dynamic processes through which the social networks and knowledge convolves. Some theories of the fertility transition take diffusion effects into account.
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From page 198... ...
Multiagent models where the agents' interactions are constrained by where they are physically located in space, their social networks, what they already know, the choices they need to make, and the available telecommunication technology hold out a promise for improved theoretical understanding of the diffusion process. REFERENCES Abler, R., J.S.
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Social Networks 4:337-355. 1982 Toward a Structural Theory of Action.
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Social Networks 18:1-27. Carley, K.M., and A
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1979 Centrality in social networks: Conceptual clarification. Social Networks 1:215-239.
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Social Networks 8:257-306. Kahneman, D., P
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Pp. 165-184 in Evolution of Social Networks, Patrick Doreian and Frans N
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22:151-175. 1998 Social Networks and the Diffusion of Fertility Control.
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Salancik, G.R., and J Pfeffer 1978 Social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design.
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Social Networks 17(1)
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1995 Evolving friendship networks: An individual oriented approach implementing similarity. Social Networks 17:83-110.
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