Social contagion involves behaviour, emotions, or conditions spreading spontaneously through a group ornetwork. The phenomenon has been discussed bysocial scientists since the late 19th century, although much work on the subject was based on unclear or even contradictory conceptions of what social contagion is, so exact definitions vary. Some scholars include the unplanned spread of ideas through a population as social contagion, though others prefer to class that asmemetics. Generally social contagion is understood to be separate from thecollective behaviour which results from a direct attempt to exertsocial influence.
Two broad divisions of social contagion arebehavioural contagion andemotional contagion. The study of social contagion has intensified in the 21st century. Much recent work involves academics fromsocial psychology,sociology, andnetwork science investigating online social networks. Studies in the 20th century typically focused on negative effects such as violent mob behaviour, whereas those of the 21st century, while sometimes looking at harmful effects, have often focused on relatively neutral or positive effects like the tendency for people totake action on climate change once a sufficient number of their neighbours do.
Metaphoric use connecting the concept ofinfection withimitation (mimesis) dates back at least toPlato, and continued into medieval and early modern literature. The term "behavioural contagion" was first introduced into modern scholarship byGustave Le Bon in his 1895 bookThe Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Further scholarly works on the subject were at first released slowly, only one or two a decade until the 1950s.Herbert Blumer was the first to specifically use the term "social contagion", in his 1939 paper oncollective behavior, where he gave thedancing mania of the middle ages as a prominent example.
From the 1950s, studies of social contagion began to investigate the phenomena empirically, and became more frequent. There was no widely shared definition of social contagion in the 20th century, so many of the studies had little in common. In 1993,David A. Levy and Paul R. Nail published a review where they stated that social contagion captures the broadest sense of the phenomena, as opposed to subtypes like behavioural or emotional contagion.
In a 1998 review, Paul Marsden suggested that social contagion is a similar phenomena tomemetics, a field of study inspired byRichard Dawkins' 1976 bookThe Selfish Gene. Marsden suggested that the two fields could be complementary, in the sense that work on social contagion largely lacked a coherent theory, but contained much evidence-based analyses, whereas memetics was rich in theory but lacking on the empirical side.
From the 1990s and into the 21st century, interest in social contagion grew rapidly, based in part on cross fertilisation with the then emerging field ofnetwork science, especially its application to the Internet.[1][2][3] With respect to positive social contagions, a series of experiments and field trials since 2009 (byNicholas Christakis and diverse collaborators) have shown that cascades of desirable behaviors can be induced in social groups, in settings as diverse as Honduran villages,[4][5][6] Indian slums,[7] online,[8] or in the lab.[9] Diverse other experiments have documented the social contagion of voting behavior,[10] emotions,[11] risk perception,[12] and diverse other phenomena.[13][14]
Scholars have long reported that the study of social contagion has suffered from the lack of a widely accepted and precise definition. Definitions have often, though not always, classified social contagion as a method of transmission that does not rely on a direct intent to influence. Other definitions have suggested that social contagion involves spontaneous imitation of others, rather than being based on conscious decisions.[note 1] In their 1993 review, Levy and Nail proposed that social contagion should be defined as the spread of affect, attitude or behaviour "where the recipient does not perceive an intentional influence attempt on the part of the initiator".[1][3][2][15]
Various typologies have been proposed for social contagion.[1][2][16]
Social contagion can be broadly split intobehavioural contagion andemotional contagion. The spread of ideas is sometimes considered a third broad category, though that is often considered part of memetics.Paul Marsden has said behavioural contagion can be split into six subcategories:hysterical contagions, deliberate self-harm contagions, contagions of aggression, rule violation contagions,consumer behaviour contagions, andfinancial contagions.[2][16][3]
Three main causes of social contagion have been proposed:disinhibitory contagion,echo contagion, andhysterical contagion.[1]Disinhibitory contagion involves a type of behaviour that the person already has some desire to engage in, but from which normally they would refrain due to a desire to comply withsocial norms. When they witness others in the crowd performing the behaviour, this can break the inhibitory effect.[1]
Echo contagion represents the spontaneous imitation of a behaviour, or transition into conformance with an emotional state shared by others.[1]Hysterical contagion represents the unwanted transmission of a behaviour, emotion or affect among a group by unknown means. Unlike with echo or disinhibitory contagion, what is being transmitted may in no way be desirable or attractive, yet it transmits anyway.[1]
Social contagion can be examined with threshold models based on how much exposure an individual needs before transmission of a behaviour or emotion occurs. Some models assume an individual needs to be convinced by a fraction of their social contacts above a given threshold to adopt a novel behaviour.[17] Therefore, the number of exposures will not increase chances of contagion unless the number of source exposures pass a certain threshold. The threshold value can divide contagion processes to two types:simple contagion andcomplex contagion.[18][19]
Insimple contagion, an individual only needs a single exposure to the new behaviour. For instance, cars travel in groups on a two-lane highway since the car in each cluster travels at a slower speed than the car behind it. This relative speed spreads through other cars who slow down to match the speed of the car in front.[17]
Incomplex contagion, the individual needs to be in contact with two or more sources exhibiting the novel behaviour.[20] This is when copying behaviours needs reinforcement or encouragement from multiple sources. Multiple sources, especially close friends, can make imitation legitimate, credible and worthwhile due to collective effort put in. Examples of complex contagions include a New York University School of Business study in California which found that households were more likely to install solar panels in neighborhoods that already had them, and that the rate of installation increases with more and more installations, creating a chain reaction that added up to a significant increase in solar adoption.[21] Other examples can be copying risky behaviour or joining social movements and riots.[18]
Much early work on social contagion looked only at harmful effects, in keeping with the infectious disease metaphor. Towards the end of the 20th century, and especially in the 21st, scholars began to look at neutral and positive contagion. For example, the rippling of happiness through a social network, up tothree degrees of separation from the initiator. The contagion effect of happiness is also strongly influenced by physical proximity. Research based on theFramingham Heart Study found that if one has a happy friend living no more than a mile away, they are 25% more likely to be happy, whereas one is 34% more likely to be happy with a happy next-door neighbour.[22]
Work has been done to understand social contagion as a way to encourage positive behaviour, as a possible complement tonudge theory. It has been suggested as a way to assist in the rehabilitation ofcriminals anddrug addicts, and as something that can encourage the adoption ofclimate friendly behaviour. Such as the increased tendency to install solar panels on one's personal home once a portion of one's neighbours have already done so.[23][24][25]
Inside thescientific community the influence of social contagion ofmental disorders likeanxiety anddepression is a topic of debate.[26]
The field of social contagion has been repeatedly criticized for lacking a clear and widely accepted definition, even though any area of research is marked by definitional variation, and for sometimes involving work that does not distinguish between contagion and other forms of social influence, like command and compliance, or from the otherwise also diffuse concept ofhomophily.[15] However, large-scale experiments and field trials can evade this concern, and can document social contagion.[27]
Insocial network analysis and relatednetwork science fields, the contagion metaphor has been described as potentially misleading in various ways. For example, an actual virus can affect someone after a single exposure, whereas typically with social contagion, people need several exposures before adopting the new behavior or emotion.[28] This relates to the concept ofcomplex contagion in network science. Some scholars (e.g.,Ralph H. Turner) have suggested that certain types of collective behaviour are better understood byemergent norm theory orconvergence theory, rather than by social contagion.[2]
