Facebook and social networks' effect on GROUP PSYCHOLOGY
Review of a fascinating book on the effect of social networking on group psychology. Why bother? Psychology = sales. Know the mind of your market and you know the path to their wallets. http://www.city-journal.org/2009/bc1118lv.html
The authors spend much of the book discussing how social networks might have arisen through evolution, what the rise of the Internet means for social connections, and the implications for both our personal lives and public policy. For instance, public health workers can more effectively stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases if they know what kind of network they?re dealing with: a hub and spoke (e.g., a prostitute with many clients) or a more transitive ?ring? network where people have few partners, but many of these partners overlap (which could happen at a small high school). On another front, they point out that voting makes little sense for an individual?one vote never decides an election?but is far more rational in a network context. As with happiness and obesity, the decision to vote has repercussions through three degrees of connections. When you vote, your spouse, colleagues, and friends, and their spouses, colleagues, and friends and so forth, are more likely to vote as well, and vice versa. Since liberals and conservatives tend to form their own social networks, this means that your decision to vote can increase the likelihood of hundreds of other people voting for the same candidate. This explains?at least on an unconscious level?why people stand in line in the rain in November.
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