Social Network Schemas and the Learning of Incomplete Networks.

Abstract

Social networks that are missing relations among some of their members--termed incomplete networks--have been of critical theoretical and empirical interest in sociological research on weak ties and structural holes but typically have been overlooked in social psychological studies of network learning. Five studies tested for schematic processing differences in the encoding and recalling of incomplete networks. In Studies 1 and 2, prior knowledge of missing relations facilitated learning an unfamiliar, incomplete network. Study 3 ruled out differences in general pattern recognition ability as an explanation. Study 4 manipulated the degree of familiarity with missing relations, which produced predicted differences in learning rates. Finally, Study 5 examined how improved learning of an incomplete network affected a strategic organizational choice. The findings suggest that people can become schematic for complex, incomplete social networks.

Ethical Decision-Making: The Role of Self-Monitoring, Future Orientation, and Social Networks

“…Indeed, the self-monitoring literature has generally reported high self-monitors to be positively associated with more central/brokerage positions in their social networks (e.g., Mehra et al, 2001;H. Oh & Kilduff, 2008;Sasovova et al, 2010), although other studies (Janicki & Larrick, 2005;Kalish & Robins, 2006) did not present consistent results tying high self-monitors to social structures.…”

Small worlds, infinite possibilities? How social networks affect entrepreneurial team formation and search

“…People seem not to be very good at seeing structural holes 'from the inside,' unless they already live in a hole-fi lled world. For example, in summarizing several studies (Freeman, 1992;Janicki and Larrick, 2005), he concluded, 'the summary conclusion from Freeman's and Janicik's experiments is that experience matters: people who live in a network that contains structural holes are more likely to recognize the holes in their next networks' (Burt, 2005: 77). …”

Emergent Leadership Structures in Informal Groups: A Dynamic, Cognitively Informed Network Model

“…Prior research has found that individuals resolve this problem by activating relational schemas, that is, schematic expectations about how a given kind of interpersonal relation is likely to be patterned. Relational schemas help people process -memorize, interpret and recall -information about otherwise overly intricate interpersonal structures (Baldwin, 1992;Janicik & Larrick, 2005;Ridgeway, 2006). Like all cognitive representations, relational schemas do not yield perfectly accurate pictures of reality, and research has documented various systematic biases stemming from schema activation (Freeman, 1992;Kilduff et al, 2008;.…”

“…Existing arguments emphasizing the bandwagon effect explain how employees' attributions of leadership change as a function of the group's emerging consensus, that is, of how many others within the group have come to regard somebody as their leader. We extend these arguments by drawing insights from relational schema theory, a line of cognitive theory that examines the schematic cognitive structures -"relational schemas" -people employ to make sense of their and others' positions in a network of interpersonal relations (Baldwin, 1992;Brashears, 2013;Fiske, 1991Fiske, , 1992Janicik & Larrick, 2005). By providing theoretical depth into how people cognitively represent and respond to the leadership network emerging around them, relational schema theory makes it possible to link an intra-individual cognitive mechanism to the dynamics -formation and erosion -of informal leadership relations within a group.…”

“…To test this model, we develop a multi-method, multi-study research design. Study 1 uses a well-established experimental protocol from relational schema research (Janicik & Larrick, 2005) to examine the hypothesis that people cognitively represent informal leadership networks via a linear-ordering schema. Study 2 develops a novel experimental design to test the hypothesis that people are more likely to form schema-consistent leadership attributions and to drop schema-inconsistent ones.…”