Bridging behavioral experiments and dynamic models to inform social network interventions

Vortrag von Dr. Manuel Sebastian Mariani

Datum: 15.05.25  Zeit: 12.15 - 13.45  Raum: Y27H12

Addressing global challenges – from public health to climate change – often involves stimulating the large-scale adoption of new products or behaviors. Traditional research on individual decision-making emphasizes understanding the cognitive and contextual drivers of adoption, while computational approaches rooted in complexity science focus on how behaviors spread throughout social networks of interconnected adopters. The integration of these two perspectives – although advocated by several research communities – remains an open challenge. In this talk, I will first introduce the complex contagion theory of social change as a framework for bridging these two traditions. I will then present novel methodologies that integrate behavioral experiments with dynamic models of new behavior spreading, enabling accurate micro-calibration of spreading simulations. Finally, I will show how these methods generate new insights into foundational problems in social network research including seeding policies for social change, the strength of weak ties, and the role of AI agents for social contagion.