Is psychology suffering from an epidemic of “contagion”? Moving from metaphors to theoretically derived concepts and methods in the study of social influences

Abstract

The term “contagion” has become increasingly popular as an omnibus catch-all to depict all kinds of mutual influences between people of equal status (or “peers”). We argue that some of these influences may qualify as “contagion,” but others denote alternative processes better described, for example, as exchange, transactions, or diffusion. To transform the term contagion from a loose metaphor to a precise and empirically useful concept, we propose that the paradigmatic case of contagious diseases can be used to identify multiple criteria that a social process must meet in order to qualify as contagion. Based on these essential elements, we describe the developmental signature of contagion, contrast contagion pathways with other temporal pathways of influence, and highlight empirical strategies needed to detect contagion. Finally, we conclude that interpretations about the nature of social influences and their labels should follow from (and not precede) empirical identification of the specific mechanisms that orchestrate transmission.

A comparison of dyadic and social network assessments of peer influence

“…(Question 2) What is the hypothesized type of influence? Table 4 provides a series of suggestive steps that can be applied during the process of defining peer influence and in determining the best analytic approach to use to address these questions (for additional reading on the importance of definitions of peer influence see Kindermann & Skinner, 2019). We also suggest that scholars carefully consider recent work indicating that conventional statistical tools do not overestimate influence effects compared with network approaches (Ragan et al, 2019) and influence effects attained from cross-lagged models are unlikely to be false positives derived from unobserved variable biases (Thomas et al, 2019).…”

Influencing laughter with AI-mediated communication

“…The (non-)findings of the 4 experiments are consonant with the growing body of work that suggests that the notions of automatic mimicry, copying, priming, repetition, alignment or contagion, even though important, are not adequate for explaining humanhuman coordination (Fusaroli et al, 2014;Hodges, 2014;Mills, 2011;Mills, 2014;Koudenburg et al, 2015;Fischer, 2016;Fusaroli and Tylen, 2016;Hale & Hamilton, 2016;Strupka et al, 2016;Kindermann & Skinner, 2019;Zhang & Healey, 2018;Chivers, 2019;Reed, 2020;cf. Sherman & Rivers, 2021; see also Lelonkiewicz et al, 2021).…”

Safety and contagion in acute psychiatric wards: How the milieu is implicated in the occurrence of clustered safety incidents

“…Finally, Kindermann and Skinner (2019) suggest that identification of the mechanisms of transmission requires examination of influences which again must be distinguished from other means of transmission (using their criteria). They propose consideration of the many existing candidate theories.…”

“…If aggression towards others and self-harm are considered to be distinct attributes, however, then this would not constitute contagion. Kindermann and Skinner (2019) further require that an attribute must spread in an asymmetrical pathway in which the overall levels of the attribute increase. One example of an attribute that spread in this way, and that therefore might qualify as attributable to contagion, was anxiety.…”