I was invited to give a talk at a workshop “Modeling and Analysis of Dynamic Social Networks” at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI) at the Ohio State University, organized by Ian Hamilton and Keith Warren. I presented my talk “Using dynamics of network interactions to infer social rules” remotely. Luckily, technology cooperated!
My talk will be available online as an MBI Video at some point.
Using dynamics of network interactions to infer social rules
Abstract: In many social species across both humans and other animals, individuals both create their social worlds through interaction decisions and are then subject to and constrained by these social constructs, which can affect an individual’s future actions. Understanding how much individuals know about their social worlds is critical in understanding these potential feedbacks. However, it is difficult to determine how much knowledge individuals have of the social structures in which they live. I present several dynamic network-based methods that provide ways to detect and quantify the extent to which individuals use of social knowledge to make decisions about how to socially interact. These methods can then be used to gain insight into the types of social information that individuals pay attention to as well as the cognitive abilities that may underlie social decisions. This approach provides new potential for broad comparative analyses to better understand the evolution of complex sociocultural traits.
