Group Boundaries Help Spread Ideas
Article Link: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-social-networks-group-boundaries-ideas.html
In 1984, Peter Blau and Joseph Schwartz suggested that social integration is much easier when group boundaries are torn down. This notion seems to make sense intuitively; when people are no longer isolated within their social boundaries, new thoughts and ideas would seem to spread unimpeded. In a recent study, Professor Damon Centola investigates this claim in greater detail using a new computational model. The model characterizes individuals by personal and professional traits such as race, religion, and political views. The more grouped the social network is, the more traits people within social clusters share. The results expand on Blau’s and Schwartz’s claim. As they predicted, decreasing group boundaries by increasing the diversity of traits helps diffuse complex ideas (e.g., new recycling initiatives, marketing approaches) across the entire network. However, the study also finds that ideas do not spread well when group boundaries were mostly eliminated; people are unlikely to be strongly influenced by strangers. Boundaries are therefore necessary for new knowledge to spread effectively across a diverse network.
In lecture, we discussed the importance that local bridges play in social networks. Groups of people are connected through local bridges that would otherwise be more distanced. This is also why information regarding job opportunities usually come from a friend of a friend; local bridges allow information and ideas to spread to a group that would otherwise not have access to these sources. This knowledge may lead to the assumption that the less clustered a network is, the easier new thoughts and ideas will propagate. Centola has shown through his research that this is true only up to a certain point and that too little grouping will actually hinder the spread of complex ideas. Perhaps the argument that ethnic student clubs limit the diffusion of new ideas may not be so sound after all.