Economics and Social Systems - Human and Social Dynamics

By Duncan Watts


The Human and Social Dynamics group will be devoted to understanding the interplay between individual-level behavior (e.g. how people make decisions about what music they like, which dates to go on, or which groups to join) and the social environment in which individual behavior necessarily plays itself out. We hope to address three principal problem areas.

Challenges

Structure and evolution of social groups and networks

Individuals make conscious decisions about with whom to interact, and what groups to join. At the same time, however, their options are constrained by the current network of ties, and affiliations. Finally, the nature of available groups is itself a function of their current membership.

At a theoretical level, therefore, we are interested in understanding how individuals, networks, and groups co-evolve over time, and what the consequences for individual agency and identity. At a practical level, we hope to understand how environments-for example dating, professional networking, and social support services-can be designed to provide participants with a satisfying social experience.

Decision making, social influence, diffusion, and collective decisions

Individuals are influenced by the choices, actions, and opinions of others. We hope to understand better the conditions governing how different modes of social influence (e.g. mere exposure versus persuasion) affect different kinds of decisions (e.g. consumer products, music, political views) and are mitigated or amplified by the attributes and identities of the individuals involved (e.g. salience of influence). Furthermore, we are interested in how social influence diffuses via networks to generate collective behavior.

Networking and collaborative problem solving

"Social networking" is usually understood to mean the use or accumulation of personal and professional relationships for some future benefit-for example, information about a job, access to venture capital, or entrée to a desirable social scene. Viewed broadly, in fact, networking is a familiar and important part of everyday life. Surprisingly, however, the mechanisms by which networking succeeds are poorly understood-in particular, there is little known about social networks that can help one network. We are interested in closing this gap, as well as the larger, but related, question of how groups of individuals coordinate to solve complex tasks, and even innovate to find new solutions.