Group Typology Shapes Social Network Representations

Efficiently representing social networks is challenging, but cognitive schemas can help address this challenge. This study examined whether network schemas related to group typology influence social network representations. In Experiment 1, participants, who were given only group-type information and the number of relationships without network structure, freely constructed friendship networks, forming more interconnected and centralized structures for task groups than social categories. Experiment 2 provided identical partial friendship network data across group types, yet group-type labels biased participants' inferences about potential future friendships, producing network structures similar to those in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, participants who memorized friendships from social networks-either from a task group or social category-showed greater accuracy when the memorized network structure aligned with the group type that activated corresponding schemas. These results suggest that individuals utilize group-related schemas to represent social networks, with task groups having closer and more centralized connections than social categories do.