On Social Contagion in Gamification

Social connections shape our behaviour because of peer pressure and social contagion. This phenomenon is amplified in online networks by particularly influential individuals: influencers. Although this concept originated in social media, recent research shows how influencers can also exist in games and affect players' long-term retention. Prolonged retention caused by influencers could benefit gameful systems, especially if the system's goal is positive behavioural change. Retention is desirable because it can aid in internalizing new habits. Therefore, we investigated retention influencers' presence within a location-based persuasive gamified system (Play&Go) and their influence on other behaviours (i.e., the pursuit of a gamification goal), via social network analysis techniques. Results show how retention influencers exist in Play&Go and how studying different influence types (which push the systems' goals) may lead to different influencer groups. Our findings emphasize the importance of social mechanics in location-based gamification and discuss the value of understanding a player community to improve game design.

Social Contagion in Veganville

Meeting the 1.5°C commitment will mean the per capita emissions need to come down to 2.6 tonnes by 2030. Epidemiological contagion modelling principles are applied to transfer of trending climate conscious food choices. This research applies social contagion theory to explore “reproduction values” and “recovery rates” of vegan diets that have potential to facilitate a climate social tipping point to meet Paris Agreement targets by 2030.

Obesity as an "infectious" disease

Introduction: Obesity has been recognized as a global epidemic by the WHO, followed by a wealth of empirical evidence supporting its contagiousness. However, the dynamics of the spread of obesity between individuals are rarely studied. A distinguishing feature of the obesity epidemic is that it is driven by a process of social contagion that cannot be perfectly described by the infectious disease model. There is also social discrimination in the obesity epidemic. Social discrimination against obese people plays quite different roles in two cases: on the one hand, when obesity cannot be eliminated, social discrimination can reduce the number of obese people; on the other hand, when obesity is eradicable, social discrimination can cause it to explode.(1) Materiał and methods: A literature analysis on obesity epidemic was carried out within the Pubmed, Google scholar and Research Gate platform. The following keywords were used in serach: obesity, epidemy, children, body max index. Purpose of the work: The aim of the following analysis is to present an obesity as an infectious disease. The steadily increasing percentage of obese people, including children, shows that there is an obesity epidemic. This is the phenomenon of social contagion, which partially explains the concept of homophily, which involves the grouping of people with similar characteristics. Potential explanations are also provided by sharing a living environment with similar access to certain foods and similar opportunities for physical activity, which defines the occurrence of analogous health habits

Aging Does Not Enhance Social Contagion Effect

Studies on the social contagion of memory show that it is possible to create false memories from the wrong responses from other people without requiring their physical presence. The current study examined age differences between false memories via the modified social contagion paradigm. Twenty older and twenty younger adults were shown six household scenes and were exposed to the erroneous memory reports of an implied confederate who was not physically present. The presentation time of the scenes and the typicality of the contagion items were manipulated. The participants watched each scene individually and then took turns giving their recall responses with the responses belonging to a fictional participant provided by written cards. The results in a final individual recall test indicated a significant contagion effect in both groups of participants. Additionally, an effect of the typicality of the contagion items was observed, such that the more typical items produced more contagion than the less typical items. In relation to true recall, the older adults remembered significantly fewer items from the scenes than the younger ones and obtained a lower score in the word list subtest of the Weschler Memory Scale. Although the older group had an episodic memory deficit, they were not more susceptible to being affected by the wrong responses of other people than younger group.