Social Network Illusion
Newsflash — you’re not as popular as you think
It just got personal
In any social network, some ideas go viral and spread like wildfire while others die out immediately or don’t catch on. How do these counterintuitive social phenomena work?
Humans live in networks. They are emotionally intelligent beings (exceptions are always there) and constantly interact with each other for purposes ranging from friendship to work within these networks. This exposes them to social influence and external behavioral patterns, which give rise to several social network illusions or paradoxes.
FRIENDSHIP PARADOX:
‘The Friendship Paradox’ was discovered by Scott L. Feld back in 1991. It states that “on average, your friends have more friends than you.” This paradox is pretty counterintuitive so let’s start with a figure.
The above figure represents a network of 8 friends represented by different alphabets, and the lines represent the fact that they are friends, i.e., A & B are friends. The numbers below any of the alphabets represent -
- The number of friends they have
2. The number of friends their friends have on average
To make this more clear, let us consider D. D has two friends — C and G.
- C has four friends — B, F, G, and D
- G has three friends — B, C, and D
The average number of friends C and G have = 3+4 / 2= 3.5
Thus, 2 denotes the number of friends D has, and 3.5 denotes the average number of friends D’s friends (C & G) have.
As we can see in the figure, only B and C have more friends than their friends have, on average. All the other individuals have either fewer or equal number of friends than their friends.
Considering the entire network’s average, each individual has 2.5 friends, and their friends have 2.98 friends.
Here’s the math behind it -
1+4+4+2+3+3+2+1 / 8 =2.5
4+2.75+3+3.5+3.3+3.3+2+2 /8 =2.98125 2.98
In this network, an average individual has fewer friends than their friends. Therefore, the friendship paradox stands.
The disproportionate distribution of friends in social circles will always give rise to this phenomenon. Individuals with more friends will also show up on more networks, driving up the average. Those with fewer friends will show up on fewer networks. For example, consider: X has 100 friends, and Y has 5 friends, and people in this network have about 20 friends. Because X has 100 friends, he will show up on 100 different networks and drive the average up for 100 individuals. On the other hand, Y, who only has 5 friends, can only bring down this average for 5 people. So, when the entire network is considered, the average individual will have fewer friends than their friends. This is because people who drive this average up, do for more people, and those who can bring this down do for fewer people.
MAJORITY ILLUSION:
The majority illusion explains why some trends spread rapidly while others might just perish. The majority illusion leads people to believe that the majority exhibits a particular attribute, characteristic, or trait. This does not hold when the entire network is considered instead of the immediate neighborhood.
Let us use an example to understand the Majority Illusion better. In the above networks, the circles represent individuals, and the lines that link these individuals show us their immediate neighborhood. In millennial terms, the lines may represent the fact that you follow them on social media.
The blue nodes are active, meaning they have a certain attribute — let’s say, they own a Fitbit. The grey nodes are inactive — they don’t have this attribute. Upon observing carefully, you’ll notice both the networks have identical placement of nodes, but with different active nodes.
In the (i) network, all the inactive nodes observe that the majority of their neighbors are active. The grey node highlighted in the figure on the left shows that out of the 4 nodes it’s connected to, 3 of them are active. Even though there are only 3 blue nodes in the entire network, making them a minority, the individual nodes are unaware of this fact because they are not “connected” to them.
However, in the (ii) network, this is not the case. All of the nodes connected to the said node are inactive. Not even a single node observes the active majority in their immediate neighborhood.
This illusion creates a false truth of sorts. This s why many teenagers overestimate their friends’ alcohol consumption and the number of parties they attend. The majority illusion occurs when the most popular or well-connected nodes are active. If they are attending parties, it’s not wrong to assume that they are an extrovert. It is implied here that they are thus more well connected or know more people.
STUPIDITY OF CROWD:
People frequently adopt the opinions or attributes of the majority, even if they are wrong. This is known as “stupidity of crowd”. Researches have shown that the decisions people make when alone differ vastly from the ones made in crowds. You might be absolutely sure that the answer to a test question is [C]. However, if everyone else in the class has marked [A], you would convince yourself that you are wrong (even if you were completely right).
The decisions you make as an individual are grossly influenced by society. An overestimation of certain social behaviors among a person’s peers influences them to increase the extent to which they exhibit the same social behavior. This is why social behaviors are termed contagious. The phenomenon of “stupidity of crowd” can be used to exploit the majority illusion to a great extent. Basically, all these external societal factors make the players irrational as they try to match what others are doing. This is where behavioral game theory comes into play.
We know now, in real-life situations a variety of social network illusions condition an individual’s thinking, and rational choices can’t always be expected from them. Behavioral game theory allows for both rational and irrational decisions as it tries to explain the factors influencing these decisions using empirical data. It explains why real-life choices deviate from rational ones that would maximize the payoff and how to use this data to develop better models and strategies.
In recent years, marketers have shifted from celebrity endorsements to social influencer marketing and social network illusions have played a major role in this. As mentioned before, an individual is more likely to follow a trend if they see that the majority of people in their network are following the same idea. However, when a celebrity endorses the same product it might not lead to the same conversion. This explains the surge in promoted ads on social media platforms. Marketers can use majority illusion to their benefit by carefully picking social media influencers and making people believe that everyone in their network is using a certain product. They only need a handful of well-connected people aka influencers to pull this off. Behavioral game theory along with a proper understanding of these social network illusions allows marketers to come up with strategies to better advertise their products. It also allows the reader to carefully examine the decisions they make and understand the various factors influencing these decisions.
You may now re-evaluate your decisions and try to outsmart your peers, as I get ready to watch the movie which EVERYONE is obsessing over.
References -
(PDF) The Majority Illusion in Social Networks
Quantifying and Correcting the Majority Illusion in Social Networks
The Social-Network Illusion That Tricks Your Mind
Why people get more stupid in a crowd
How the Majority Illusion Can Supercharge Your Influence Marketing
