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The "Majority Illusion" in Social Networks.
Kristina Lerman1, Xiaoran Yan1, Xin-Zeng Wu1,2
1USC Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, CA, United States of America.
Plos One
|February 18, 2016
Summary
Social network structure can create a "majority illusion," causing people to overestimate rare states. This can accelerate social contagion spread, especially in heterogeneous networks.
Area of Science:
- Social network analysis
- Sociology
- Computational social science
Background:
- Individual decisions are influenced by others' choices and states.
- People estimate others' states from limited social network observations.
- Network structure can distort these local observations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce and define the
- majority illusion
- phenomenon.
- To develop a statistical model quantifying this illusion.
- To investigate network properties exacerbating the illusion.
Main Methods:
- Statistical modeling to quantify the majority illusion.
- Validation using synthetic and real-world network data.
- Analysis of network structure, including degree distribution and assortativity.
Main Results:
- The majority illusion causes overestimation of globally rare states.
- This overestimation can accelerate social contagion.
- The illusion is amplified in networks with heterogeneous degree distributions and disassortative structures.
Conclusions:
- Network structure significantly impacts individuals' perception of social states.
- The majority illusion is a key mechanism in social contagion dynamics.
- Understanding network topology is crucial for predicting social behavior and contagion spread.
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