Group Processes, Norms and Local Network Dynamics
Speaker
Abstract
| Dr. Kitts will begin by drawing on his research on utopian communes, examining the dynamics of social norms and group structure. He will then describe his work in formal modeling, showing how group level patterns can emerge as unintended byproducts of the most elementary processes of social interaction in networks. The rest of the talk will focus on a recent empirical study of these micro-level processes. In 2004-2007, Dr. Kitts collaborated with a team of computer scientists working to develop methods for using wearable sensors to record social interactions, and to then derive social network data automatically from audio recordings. The researchers implemented these methods in a study of two student cohorts as they joined a graduate program at a large US university. In analyzing five forms of social interaction (work collaborations, social visits, dyadic conversations, group conversations, and phone calls) among these students, Dr. Kitts will compare how these five relations change over the academic year to shed new light on the mechanisms underlying the evolution of networks within social groups. As the commune project illustrated and the agent-based models demonstrated, such processes have strong implications for group-level outcomes. |
| James Kitts is an Assistant Professor in Management at Columbia University, having previously held positions in Sociology at Dartmouth College and the University of Washington. He is broadly interested in the dynamics of cooperation and competition among organizations and among their members. He has studied communication biases in interaction networks, the dynamics of polarization, factionalism, and extremism in social influence networks, and the demography and ecology of radical social movement movement organizations. His work has recently appeared in American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Demography, and Social Psychology Quarterly. |
| Contact information: |
| Petra van den Brink |
