Networks in Context: The Social Flow of Political Information

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 1197-1216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Huckfeldt ◽  
John Sprague
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Data Base ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Individual Control ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Flow ◽  
Informational Networks

We examine the effects of individual political preferences and the distribution of such preferences on the social transmission of political information. Our data base combines a 1984 election survey of citizens in South Bend, Indiana with a subsequent survey of people with whom these citizens discuss politics. Several findings emerge from the effort. First, individuals do purposefully construct informational networks corresponding to their own political preferences, and they also selectively misperceive socially supplied political information. More important, both of these individual-level processes are shown to be conditioned by constraints imposed due to the distribution of political preferences in the social context. Thus, individual control over socially supplied political information is partial and incomplete. Finally, these information-transmitting processes interact with the social context in a manner that favors partisan majorities while undermining political minorities.

Perceived organizational support: the interactive role of coworkers’ perceptions and employees’ voice

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Stinglhamber ◽  
Marc Ohana ◽  
Gaëtane Caesens ◽  
Maryline Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Organizational Citizenship ◽  
Organizational Support ◽  
Perceived Support ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a focal employee’s perception of organizational support (POS) is shaped by the social context or, more specifically, by his/her coworkers’ POS. The authors further aim to identify the conditions under which coworkers’ POS may have more influence or, on the contrary, less or even no influence. Design/methodology/approach Data were obtained from questionnaires distributed among a sample of 195 employees and among their supervisors. Findings Coworkers’ levels of POS are positively related to the focal employee’s POS with positive consequences in terms of job satisfaction and, finally, organizational citizenship behaviors. This influence of coworkers’ POS is strengthened when the focal employee experiences low voice in the workplace. Research limitations/implications Overall, this research contributes to organizational support theory by showing that POS may also develop based on a socially constructed process and not only on an individual-level psychological process. Practical implications Our findings have practical implications for HR policies employed by practitioners to socialize newcomers and to manage perceived support in a context of organizational change. Originality/value Building on a few recent studies suggesting that the social context may influence employees’ perceptions of organizational support, the present study is the first to show that the influence of the social context is more likely to occur under specific conditions, i.e. when employees experience low voice.

scholarly journals Individual, but not population asymmetries, are modulated by social environment and genotype in Drosophila melanogaster

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Versace ◽  
Matteo Caffini ◽  
Zach Werkhoven ◽  
Benjamin L. de Bivort
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Position And Orientation ◽  
Female Male Female

AbstractTheory predicts that social interactions can induce an alignment of behavioral asymmetries between individuals (i.e., population-level lateralization), but evidence for this effect is mixed. To understand how interaction with other individuals affects behavioral asymmetries, we systematically manipulated the social environment of Drosophila melanogaster, testing individual flies and dyads (female-male, female-female and male-male pairs). In these social contexts we measured individual and population asymmetries in individual behaviors (circling asymmetry, wing use) and dyadic behaviors (relative position and orientation between two flies) in five different genotypes. We reasoned that if coordination between individuals drives alignment of behavioral asymmetries, greater alignment at the population-level should be observed in social contexts compared to solitary individuals. We observed that the presence of other individuals influenced the behavior and position of flies but had unexpected effects with respect to individual and population asymmetries: individual-level asymmetries were strong and modulated by the social context but population-level asymmetries were mild or absent. Moreover, the strength of individual-level asymmetries differed between strains, but this was not the case for population-level asymmetries. These findings suggest that the degree of social interaction found in Drosophila is insufficient to drive population-level behavioral asymmetries.

Relationships between Negotiators: A Neglected Topic in the Study of Negotiation

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christer Jönsson
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Process ◽  
International Negotiations ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Level Of Aggregation ◽  
The Individual

Negotiation can be seen as a dynamic social process. Perspectives emphasizing the social context and dynamics of negotiations have been largely neglected in the negotiation literature. This article addresses the question of why social relations have received such scant attention, reviews the existing literature on negotiation as a social process, and spells out some ingredients of a social contextual approach. Finally, by way of illustration, such an approach is applied to international negotiations. Whereas ideas about social dynamics emanate from a focus on individuals, international negotiations take place at a level of aggregation and representation most remote from the individual level. Yet, even at this macro level, social context matters in negotiations.

The Social Context of Political Change: Durability, Volatility, and Social Influence

1983 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 929-944 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Robert Huckfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Individual Preference ◽  
Contextual Effects ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Contextual Influence ◽  
The Social

This article translates several explanations for contextual effects upon politics into mathematical, dynamic representations. These representations are used to consider several questions. Under what circumstances does the social context lead to durability and volatility in mass political preferences? Do different specifications of contextual influence lead to different conclusions regarding its dynamic consequences? Does the social context have different dynamic implications for individual preference and for the aggregate preferences of the population as a whole? These questions are not addressed by gathering and analyzing data, but rather by examining the deductive consequences of the various explanations for contextual influence.

The Effects of Intergroup Climate on Immigrants’ Acculturation Preferences

2013 ◽  
Vol 221 (4) ◽  
pp. 252-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Christ ◽  
Frank Asbrock ◽  
Kristof Dhont ◽  
Thomas F. Pettigrew ◽  
Ulrich Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Cross Sectional Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Acculturation Process ◽  
Cultural Maintenance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Level Of Analysis

The effect of the intergroup climate on acculturation preferences among host-majority and immigrant group members has been long acknowledged in the acculturation literature. Only recently, however, research has started to directly examine the effect of the intergroup climate on acculturation preferences. In the present research, we aimed to contribute to this new and important line of research by adopting a multilevel approach to examine the effect of the intergroup climate (social context level of analysis) on immigrants’ acculturation preferences (individual level of analysis) over and above individual-level predictors of acculturation preferences. Based on recent cross-sectional survey data from Germany, we examined the acculturation preferences (cultural maintenance and maintenance of intergroup relations) of members of immigrant groups (immigrants from non-Western countries; N individual level = 317) living in different districts in Germany (N district-level = 179). On the social context level, we used the mean prejudice- and acculturation preferences-scores of the German respondents (N = 3,495) as proxies for the intergroup climate within these districts. Results of multilevel path analysis showed that on the context level, a negative intergroup climate (i.e., a higher amount of prejudice of the German respondents within the districts) was related to a stronger desire for cultural maintenance among the immigrants. The potential implications of a hostile intergroup climate for the acculturation process are discussed.

scholarly journals Cultural diffusion dynamics depend on behavioural production rules

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Chimento ◽  
Brendan J. Barrett ◽  
Anne Kandler ◽  
Lucy M. Aplin
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Production Rules ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Cultural Diffusion ◽  
Diffusion Analysis ◽  
Diffusion Dynamics ◽  
The Social

Culture is an outcome of the acquisition of knowledge about behaviour through social transmission, and its subsequent production. Transmission and production are often discussed interchangeably or modeled separately, yet to date, no study has accounted for both processes and explored their interaction. We present a generative model that integrates the two in order to explore how variation in either might shape cultural diffusion dynamics. Agents make behavioural choices that change as they learn from their behavioural productions. Their repertoires also change over time, and the social transmission of behaviours depends on their frequency. We diffuse a novel behaviour through social networks across a large parameter space to demonstrate how accounting for both transmission and production reveals dependencies between individual-level behavioural production rules and population-level diffusion dynamics. We then investigate how such dependencies might affect the performance of two commonly used inferential models for social learning; Network-based Diffusion Analysis (NBDA), and Experienced Weighted Attraction models (EWA). By clarifying the distinction between acquisition and usage, we illuminate often-overlooked theoretical differences between social learning and social influence. These distinctions yield consequences and new considerations for how inferential methods are applied to empirical studies of culture.

Social transmission bias and the cultural evolution of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Siew Hong Teoh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Economic Attitudes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Beliefs ◽  
Over Time

AbstractEvolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for asocialexplanation for the evolution of economic attitudes is evidenced, for example, by immense variations in folk-economic beliefs over time and across individuals.

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