Tag Archives: Norms

What Is(n’t) a Friend? Dimensions of the Friendship Concept Among Adolescents

This study investigates the meaning of friendship for eight diverse cohorts of sixth graders, challenging ubiquitous assumptions that friendships represent liking and social interaction, friendships are directed, and friendships are equivalent to one another. Adolescents primarily construe friendship as relational norms, expectations for mutual behavior, along with mutual liking and interaction. Boys and girls weight these dimensions differently in defining friendship.

Kitts, James A. and Diego F. Leal. “What Is(n’t) a Friend? Dimensions of the Friendship Concept Among Adolescents.” Social Networks. 66: 161-170, 2021.

Social Influence and the Emergence of Cultural Norms

Mäs, Michael and James A. Kitts. Social Influence and the Emergence of Cultural Norms . Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, Springer Publications, 2012.

Norms

Norms Kitts, James A. and Yen-Sheng Chiang. Encyclopedia of Social Problems, Sage Publications, May 2008.

Prestige

Prestige Kitts, James A. and Blaine G. Robins. Encyclopedia of Social Problems, Sage Publications, May 2008.

Social Influence and the Emergence of Norms Amid Ties of Amity and Enmity

This paper explores the coevolution of social networks and behavioral norms. Previous research has investigated the long-term behavior of feedback systems of attraction and influence, particularly the tendency toward homogenization in arbitrary cultural fields. This paper extends those models by allowing that norms diffuse not only by simple contagion but through intentional sanctioning behavior among peers. Further, the model allows for negative relations, where actors differentiate themselves from enemies while seeking to align themselves with friends. Sociometric maps reveal nontrivial system dynamics – structural bifurcation, discrimination between factions, and cycles of deviance and solidarity – emerging from a few elementary agent-level assumptions.

View online appendix here.

Kitts, James A. “Social Influence and the Emergence of Norms Amid Ties of Amity and Enmity.” Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, 14(3): 407-422, March 2006.

Polarization in Dynamic Networks: A Hopfield Model of Emergent Structure

Why do populations often self-organize into antagonistic groups even in the absence of competition over scarce resources? We look for answers by exploring the dynamics of influence and attraction between computational agents. Our model is an extension of Hopfield’s attractor network. Agents are attracted to others with similar states (the principle of homophily) and are also influenced by others, as conditioned by the strength and valence of the social tie. Negative valence implies xenophobia (instead of homophily) and differentiation (instead of imitation). Consistent with earlier work on structural balance, we find that networks can self-organize into two antagonistic factions, without the knowledge or intent of the agents. We model this tendency as a function of network size, the number of potentially contentious issues, and agents’ openness and flexibility toward alternative positions. Although we find that polarization into two antagonistic groups is a unique global attractor, we investigate the conditions under which global uniformity or pluralistic alignments may also be equilibria.

Macy, Michael W., Kitts, James A., Flache, Andreas, and Steve Benard. “Polarization in Dynamic Networks: A Hopfield Model of Emergent Structure. Dynamic Social Network Modeling and Analysis, National Academies Press, 162-173, 2003.

Egocentric Bias or Information Management? Selective Disclosure and the Social Roots of Norm Misperception

This paper examines systematic biases in group members’ inferences about collective support for group norms. While theories of “looking glass perception” suggest a tendency to project our own preferences onto others, this paper shows that observed biases may simply reflect flows of information through social networks. Members conceal their counter-normative behavior and divulge it disproportionately within confidence relations. This predicts structured inference, where members’ inferences depend on their social ties, and also pluralistic ignorance, where members generally overestimate collective support for existing norms. These predictions are evaluated in a field study of perceived normative consensus in five vegetarian housing cooperatives. Results fail to support the intrinsic bias argument, but demonstrate these forms of information bias. Also, by locating this structural effect only in large groups that facilitate private conversation, findings highlight the mechanism of selective disclosure. This source of normative inertia may account for the puzzling stability of broadly unpopular norms in groups.

Kitts, James A. “Egocentric Bias or Information Management? Selective Disclosure and the Social Roots of Norm Misperception.” Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(3): 222-237, September 2003.

Structural Learning: Attraction and Conformity in Task-Oriented Groups

This study extends previous research that showed how informal social sanctions can backfire when members prefer friendship over enforcement of group norms. We use a type of neural network to model the coordination of informal social control in a small group of adaptive agents confronted with a social dilemma. This model incorporates two mechanisms of social influence, informal sanctions and imitation. Both mechanisms vary with the strength of the social tie between source and target. Previous research focused on the effects of social sanctions. Here, we demonstrate a curvilinear effect of imitation – or “mimetic influence” – on compliance with prosocial norms. Moderate doses of mimetic influence reduce the coordination complexity of self-organized collective action and help the network achieve satisfactory levels of cooperation. High doses, however, undermine the learning required to find cooperative solutions. Increasing group size also diminishes compliance due to increased complexity, with larger groups requiring more imitation to overcome the coordination problem.

Kitts, James A., Macy, Michael W., and Andreas Flache. “Structural Learning: Attraction and Conformity in Task-Oriented Groups.” Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 5:129-145, 1999.