Leveraging Advances in Social Network Thinking for National Security Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
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3 Networks-Plus: Within the Individual
3 Networks-Plus: Within the Individual
Pages 19-28
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From page 19... ...
Emily Falk, University of Pennsylvania, a virtual moderator and presenter in this panel, added that researchers are interested in understanding how people use and perceive their networks, and are looking at individuals' use of social networks from a number of perspectives, such as identity formation and social, cognitive, and affective features. THE BRAIN IN THE SOCIAL WORLD Carolyn Parkinson, University of California, Los Angeles, provided examples of studies that integrate approaches from social neuroscience and psychology with those from social network thinking to investigate information processing within individual minds.
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From page 20... ...
Combining these results with knowledge about the functions of the different brain regions, she explained, can provide insight into how particular facets of social networks impact social responses. Parkinson described another study of brain response and networks in which researchers observed individual differences in how brain regions tracked the popularity of other network members.
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From page 21... ...
Parkinson reported that this study found greater similarities in neural response among friends than among pairs of people who were farther apart in the social network. She suggested that future research address whether observed similarities in neural processing are a cause or consequence of friendship, and consider the questions of what kinds of similarities predict whether people become friends and the ways in which friends become more similar over time as they associate.
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From page 22... ...
reduce the threat of the proposed behavior change and allow a person to perceive greater value in the persuasive messages. She added that studies of brain activity have shown that such use of value affirmation and other priming techniques does increase activity in the brain value system and predict subsequent behavior change.
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From page 23... ...
She reported that people whose friend networks comprised more physically active individuals showed more brain activity in the value system, with corresponding change in behavior involving increased physical activity. Falk presented another example in which the behavior change among people with different types of social networks was the same, but the underlying brain mechanisms turned out to be different.
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From page 24... ...
He noted that a group of people interacting through and with technology is referred to as a "sociotechnical system." According to Hoey, the number of people creating online networks for social purposes and collaboration has increased exponentially. He cited the examples of an online community of engineers developing a do-it-yourself autonomous car system and recruiting a network of drivers to help reduce congestion and traffic-related pollution; another group creating apps to aid refugees with migrant issues in Europe; and computer programmers working together virtually to develop new software.1 He noted that the comments and interactions among people in these online networks can be cordial, but they can also be negative and mean-spirited.
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From page 25... ...
Finally, Hoey introduced affect control theory as a mathematical consistency theory that has been operationalized as a computer program.4 The premise behind affect control theory is that actors in a group behave in ways that cause them to experience transient impressions that are consistent with their fundamental sentiments. The transient impressions and fundamental sentiments are represented mathematically based on the scaling of the three dimensions identified by Osgood.
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From page 26... ...
Joseph presented an example drawn from recent events to illustrate how strong and weak identities could have played a role in an observed behavior and change in a social network. The example centered on a longtime Buffalo Bills fan who quit his job at the Bills stadium suddenly after members of the team protested the national anthem.
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From page 27... ...
For example, with Twitter, people reveal their identities, and they interact in a dynamic social network. Joseph suggested that research look at how particular identities are built and accepted, how identities are used in different networks, how identities are dropped, and how network structures play a role in identity formation.
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