Damon Centola

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | MIT

The biomedical sciences must maintain and enhance a research culture that prioritizes rigour and transparency. The US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke convened a workshop entitled ‘Catalyzing Communities of Research Rigor Champions’ that brought together a diverse group of leaders in promoting research rigour and transparency...

In a randomized, pre-post intervention study, we evaluated the influence of a large language model (LLM) generative AI system on accuracy of physician decision-making and bias in healthcare. 50 US-licensed physicians reviewed a video clinical vignette, featuring actors representing different demographics (a White male or a Black female) with chest...

Errors in clinical decision-making are disturbingly common. Recent studies have found that 10 to 15% of all clinical decisions regarding diagnoses and treatment are inaccurate. Here, we experimentally study the ability of structured information-sharing networks among clinicians to improve clinicians' diagnostic accuracy and treatment decisions. We...

In the last few years, breakthroughs in computational and experimental techniques have produced several key discoveries in the science of networks and human collective intelligence. This review presents the latest scientific findings from two key fields of research: collective problem-solving and the wisdom of the crowd. I demonstrate the core theo...

Bias in clinical practice, in particular in relation to race and gender, is a persistent cause of healthcare disparities. We investigated the potential of a peer-network approach to reduce bias in medical treatment decisions within an experimental setting. We created “egalitarian” information exchange networks among practicing clinicians who provid...

Social networks are ubiquitous. The science of networks has shaped how researchers and society understand the spread of disease, the precursors of loneliness, the rise of protest movements, the causes of social inequality, the influence of social media, and much more. Egocentric analysis conceives of each individual, or ego, as embedded in a person...

The standard measure of distance in social networks – average shortest path length – assumes a model of “simple” contagion, in which people only need exposure to influence from one peer to adopt the contagion. However, many social phenomena are “complex” contagions, for which people need exposure to multiple peers before they adopt. Here, we show t...

Individuals vary widely in how they categorize novel and ambiguous phenomena. This individual variation has led influential theories in cognitive and social science to suggest that communication in large social groups introduces path dependence in category formation, which is expected to lead separate populations toward divergent cultural trajector...

Do efficient communication networks accelerate solution discovery? The most prominent theory of organizational design for collective learning maintains that informationally efficient collaboration networks increase a group’s ability to find innovative solutions to complex problems. We test this idea against a competing theory that argues that commu...

Despite substantial investments in public health campaigns, misunderstanding of health-related scientific information is pervasive. This is especially true in the case of tobacco use, where smokers have been found to systematically misperceive scientific information about the negative health effects of smoking, in some cases leading smokers to incr...

Objective: We sought to test whether participation in an online group including IUD users influenced IUD-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavior among IUD non-users, as a proof-of-concept evaluation of information dissemination for less commonly used or novel contraceptives. Study design: We conducted a blinded, randomized controlled trial on...

While social comparison research has focused on the processes and consequences of how the comparer gleans information from the comparison other (individual or group), recent research on social networks demonstrates how information and influence are distributed across persons in a network. This chapter reviews social influence processes in social ne...

The relationship between social networks and health encompasses everything from the flow of pathogens and information to the diffusion of beliefs and behaviors. This review addresses the vast and multidisciplinary literature that studies social networks as a structural determinant of health. In particular, we report on the current state of knowledg...

Theories in favor of deliberative democracy are based on the premise that social information processing can improve group beliefs. While research on the “wisdom of crowds” has found that information exchange can increase belief accuracy on noncontroversial factual matters, theories of political polarization imply that groups will become more extrem...

Significance Scientific communications about climate change are frequently misinterpreted due to motivated reasoning, which leads some people to misconstrue climate data in ways that conflict with the intended message of climate scientists. Attempts to reduce partisan bias through bipartisan communication networks have found that exposure to divers...

Since the publication of “Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties” in 2007, complex contagions have been studied across an enormous variety of social domains. In reviewing this decade of research, we discuss recent advancements in applied studies of complex contagions, particularly in the domains of health, innovation diffusion, social med...

Tipping points in social convention Once a population has converged on a consensus, how can a group with a minority viewpoint overturn it? Theoretical models have emphasized tipping points, whereby a sufficiently large minority can change the societal norm. Centola et al. devised a system to study this in controlled experiments. Groups of people wh...

Since the publication of 'Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties' in 2007, complex contagions have been studied across an enormous variety of social domains. In reviewing this decade of research, we discuss recent advancements in applied studies of complex contagions, particularly in the domains of health, innovation diffusion, social med...

To identify what features of online social networks can increase physical activity, we conducted a 4-arm randomized controlled trial in 2014 in Philadelphia, PA. Students (n=790, mean age=25.2) at an university were randomly assigned to one of four conditions composed of either supportive or competitive relationships and either with individual or t...

Objective. To identify what features of social media – promotional messaging or peer networks – can increase physical activity. Method. A 13-week social media-based exercise program was conducted at a large Northeastern university in Philadelphia, PA. In a randomized controlled trial, 217 graduate students from the University were randomized to thr...

A growing number of online health communities offer individuals the opportunity to receive information, advice, and support from peers. Recent studies have demonstrated that these new online contacts can be important informational resources, and can even exert significant influence on individuals’ behavior in various contexts. However little is kno...

Collective behaviors often spread via the self-reinforcing dynamics of critical mass. In collective behaviors with strongly self-reinforcing dynamics, incentives to participate increase with the number of participants, such that incentives are highest when the full population has adopted the behavior. By contrast, when collective behaviors have wea...

How does the composition of a population affect the adoption of health behaviors and innovations? Homophily—similarity of social contacts—can increase dyadic-level influence, but it can also force less healthy individuals to interact primarily with one another, thereby excluding them from interactions with healthier, more influential, early adopter...

Traditionally, sociologists have tried to understand social life as a structured system of institutions and norms that shape individual behavior from the top down. In contrast, a new breed of social modelers suspect that much of social life emerges from the bottom up, more like improvisational jazz than a symphony orchestra. People do not simply pl...

Join the Club An important question for policy-makers is how to communicate information (for example, about public health interventions) and promote behavior change most effectively across a population. The structure of a social network can dramatically affect the diffusion of behavior through a population. Centola (p. 1194 ) examined whether the n...

Studies of cultural differentiation have shown that social mechanisms that normally lead to cultural convergence—homophily and influence—can also explain how distinct cultural groups can form. However, this emergent cultural diversity has proven to be unstable in the face of cultural drift—small errors or innovations that allow cultures to change f...

The strength of weak ties is that they tend to be long - they connect socially distant locations, allowing information to diffuse rapidly. The authors test whether this "strength of weak ties" generalizes from simple to complex contagions. Complex contagions require social affirmation from multiple sources. Examples include the spread of high-risk...

Tolerance against failures and errors is an important feature of many complex networked systems [1,2]. It has been shown that a class of inhomogeneously wired networks called scale-free[1,3] networks can be surprisingly robust to failures, suggesting that socially self-organized systems such as the World-Wide Web, the Internet, and other kinds of s...

Random links between otherwise distant nodes can greatly facilitate the propagation of disease or information, provided contagion can be transmitted by a single active node. However, we show that when the propagation requires simultaneous exposure to multiple sources of activation, called complex propagation, the effect of random links can be just...

In studies of cultural differentiation, the joint mechanisms of homophily and influence have been able to explain how distinct cultural groups can form. While these mechanisms normally lead to cultural convergence, increased levels of heterogeneity can allow them to produce global diversity. However, this emergent cultural diversity has proven to b...

Random links between otherwise distant nodes can greatly facilitate the propagation of disease or information, provided contagion can be transmitted by a single active node. However we show that when the propagation requires simultaneous exposure to multiple sources of activation, called multiplex propagation, the effect of random links is just the...

The authors demonstrate the uses of agent-based computational models in an application to a social enigma they call the "emperor's dilemma," based on the Hans Christian Andersen fable. In this model, agents must decide whether to comply with and enforce a norm that is supported by a few fanatics and opposed by the vast majority. They find that casc...

This paper presents a hands-on approach to learning about evolution; specifically, the evolution of altruistic and cooperative behavior. The classical view of individual selection stresses the importance of competition between individuals for resources and survival. On this view, altruistic and cooperative behavior appear to be disadvantageous for...