The "Majority Illusion" in Social Networks

Individual's decisions, from what product to buy to whether to engage in risky behavior, often depend on the choices, behaviors, or states of other people. People, however, rarely have global knowledge of the states of others, but must estimate them from the local observations of their social contacts. Network structure can significantly distort individual's local observations. Under some conditions, a state that is globally rare in a network may be dramatically over-represented in the local neighborhoods of many individuals. This effect, which we call the "majority illusion," leads individuals to systematically overestimate the prevalence of that state, which may accelerate the spread of social contagions. We…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: 1217605
• DA
  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

  Award: W911NF-12-1-0034
• AR
  Advanced Research Projects Agency
• AF
  Air Force Office of Scientific Research

  Awards: FA9550-, FA9550-10-1-0569, FA9550