New social movements, beliefs, behaviors, and technologies often struggle to gain traction. Some diseases, such as Covid-19, spread quickly and created a world-changing pandemic. Could the idea of viral diseases be applied in spreading innovations and beneficial behaviors? Damon Centola talks about his best-selling books How Behavior Spreads and Change: How to Make Big Things Happen.

In this episode, he shares the findings of over a decade's worth of original research on social networks and societal behaviors. Damon talks about what drives change— influence, propagation of new ideas, and transmitting beliefs and behaviors from person to person. Listen as he and Greg talk about factors that led to the success of the Black Lives Matter movement, the fall of Google+, and the rise of political polarization. 

How influencers may not have much influence when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine

So, the people who are maybe feeling like, “Oh, it's inconvenient, I get the idea.” But then they see an influencer, and like alright, that gets them over the hump. But the people who are feeling distrustful of the message itself about vaccination, seeing an influencer only makes them suspicious of that influence. It doesn’t change their fundamental receptiveness. 

Why should influencers be cautious about sharing messages?

An influencer can't just do whatever they want. They have to be sensitive to the audience they're speaking to. And this is where the bias in a community plays such an important role. The emphasis on influencers is misguided because it overlooks the fact that influencers are really only influential when they're reinforcing our existing biases, which is another way of saying they're spreading simple contagions.

How did World War one recruitment initiatives succeed in leveraging local ties to get more people to join the effort?

By mobilizing campaigns that basically said, “You can fight with your buddies, the people that you know in your hometown”. Then hometowns actually got behind the war effort, and people mobilized together and generated the largest volunteer army that Britain had seen to date.

Guest Profile

• Damon Centola’s Bio from His Official Website
• Faculty Profile at University of Pennsylvania
• Damon Centola’s Bio on Coursera
• Damon Centola on Twitter
• Damon Centola on Instagram

His Work

• Damon Centola on Google Scholar
• Change: How to Make Big Things Happen
• How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions