The microstructures of network recall: How social networks are encoded and represented in human memory

AbstractA growing number of studies indicate that aspects of psychology and cognition influence network structure, but much remains to be learned about how network information is stored and retrieved from memory. Are networks recalled as dyads, as triads, or more generally as sub-groups? We employ an experimental design coupled with exponential random graph models to address this issue. We find that respondents flexibly encode social information as triads or groups, depending on the network, but not as dyads. This supports prior research showing that networks are stored using “compression heuristics”, but also provides evidence of cognitive flexibility in the process of encoding relational information

In the organization’s shadow: How individual behavior is shaped by organizational leakage

Individuals who join an organization often adopt its characteristic behaviors, but does the same effect extend to nearby nonmembers, and is this process impeded or enhanced by the competition between organizations? This article argues that organizations influence the behavior of both members and proximate nonmembers in a process we term “organizational leakage” and that competition between organizations moderates the impact of any one of them on individual behavior. This article finds, using the Add Health data, that an individual’s location in an organizational ecology is an important predictor of his or her behavior, even while controlling for other factors, including membership

Bridging Alone: Religious Conservatism, Marital Homogamy, and Voluntary Association Membership

This study characterizes social insularity of religiously conservative American married couples by examining patterns of voluntary associationmembership. Constructing a dataset of 3938 marital dyads from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, the author investigates whether conservative religious homogamy encourages membership in religious voluntary groups and discourages membership in secular voluntary groups. Results indicate that couples’ shared affiliation with conservative denominations, paired with beliefs in biblical authority and inerrancy, increases the likelihood of religious group membership for husbands and wives and reduces the likelihood of secular group membership for wives, but not for husbands. The social insularity of conservative religious groups appears to be reinforced by homogamy—particularly by wives who share faith with husbands

Negligible Connections? The Role of Familiar Others in the Diffusion of Smoking Among Adolescents

How is the delinquent behavior of adolescents influenced by their peers? Previous studies in criminology have primarily focused on the effects of friendship networks on delinquency, but what is less examined is the influence of weaker and often negligible relationships on behavior. In this paper, we explore the effect of familiar others, namely those socio-demographically similar peers who are not connected through friendships, on the behavioral diffusion of smoking among adolescents. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we show that, even after controlling for the behavior of friends, the smoking behavior of familiar others has a significant longitudinal effect on adolescents’ likelihood of smoking tobacco and marijuana. The results have important implications for expanding our understanding of the social diffusion of adolescent behavior through contextual mechanisms

Social isolation in America: Changes in core discussion networks over two decades

Have the core discussion networks of Americans changed in the past two decades? In 1985, the General Social Survey (GSS) collected the first nationally representative data on the confidants with whom Americans discuss important matters. In the 2004 GSS the authors replicated those questions to assess social change in core network structures. Discussion networks are smaller in 2004 than in 1985. The number of people saying there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled. The mean network size decreases by about a third (one confidant), from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. The modal respondent now reports having no confidant; the modal respondent in 1985 had three confidants. Both kin and non-kin confidants were lost in the past two decades, but the greater decrease of non-kin ties leads to more confidant networks centered on spouses and parents, with fewer contacts through voluntary associations and neighborhoods. Most people have densely interconnected confidants similar to them. Some changes reflect the changing demographics of the U.S. population. Educational heterogeneity of social ties has decreased, racial heterogeneity has increased. The data may overestimate the number of social isolates, but these shrinking networks reflect an important social change in America There are some things that we discuss only with people who are very close to us. These important topics may vary with the situation or the person—we may ask for help, probe for information, or just use the person as a sounding board for important decisions—but these are the people who make up our core network of confidants. How have these discussion networks of close confidants changed over the past two Please address correspondence to Mille

Gangs, Clubs, and Alcohol: The Effect of Organizational Membership on Adolescent Drinking Behavior

How does adolescent organizational membership in general, and simultaneous membership in distinct types of organizations in particular, impact drinking behavior? While past studies have focused either on the learning effect of involvement with gangs or on the constraining influence of conventional organizations on adolescent problem behavior, we explore the possibility that conventional school clubs can serve as socializing opportunities for existing gang members to engage in drinking behavior with non-gang club members. Using the Add Health data, we show that gang members drink more often, and engage in more binge drinking, than non-members. More importantly, individuals who are members of both gangs and school clubs drink alcohol at greater levels than those who are solely involved in gangs. In addition, non-gang adolescents who are co-members with gang members in the same school club are more likely to drink alcohol than non-members. This result has important implications for understanding the role of organizations in adolescent behavior and suggests that the study of delinquent behaviors would benefit from devoting more attention to individuals who bridge distinct types of organizations

Blaunet: An R-based graphical user interface package to analyze Blau space.

McPherson's Blau space and affiliation ecology model is a powerful tool for analyzing the ecological competition among social entities, such as organizations, along a combination of sociodemographic characteristics of their members. In this paper we introduce the R-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) package Blaunet, an integrated set of tools to calculate, visualize, and analyze the statuses of individuals and social entities in Blau space, parameterized by multiple sociodemographic traits as dimensions. The package is able to calculate the Blau statuses at the nodal, dyadic, and meso levels based on three types of information: sociodemographic characteristics, group affiliations (e.g., membership in groups/organizations), and network ties. To facilitate this, Blaunet has the following five main capabilities, it can: 1) identify a list of possible salient dimensions; 2) calculate, plot, and analyze niches for social entities by measuring the social distance along the salient dimensions between individuals affiliated with them; 3) generate Blau bubbles for individuals, thereby allowing the study of interpersonal influence of similar others even with limited or no network information; 4) capture niche dynamics cross-sectionally by calculating the intensity of exploitation from the carrying capacity and the membership rate; and 5) analyze the niche movement longitudinally by estimating the predicted niche movement equations. We illustrate these capabilities of Blaunet with example datasets