A Network Analysis of Social Contagion Processes in an Organizational Intervention
研究通过网络分析建模社会传染对个人心理属性的影响，发现社会传染形成的规范比小组期望或行为更能预测自我认知，且会抵消干预效果，为设计干预措施提供新工具。
Interventions aimed at changing the psychological attributes of individuals who form a social system may be limited by reliance on models and methods which do not account for the effects of social interaction on individual attributes. The use of network analysis to model the effects of social contagion on personal attributes is demonstrated in an evaluation of an organizational intervention. Sociometric indices of the norms created by social contagion predicted subjects' self-perceptions better than either expectations imposed on them in small groups or their own observable behavior. Social contagion stabilized the subjects' self-perceptions over time, despite the efforts of the intervention to change their self-perceptions through small group socialization and organizational restructuring. Network models of social contagion may provide useful tools for the design and evaluation of interventions that aim to change the attributes of individuals who form social systems. Further, these models theoretically integrate social relations and social cognition in a manner that helps to bridge the sociological and psychological study of human relations.