Social Networks and Cognition

Abstract

Social network analysis, now often thought of simply as network science, has penetrated nearly every scientific and many scholarly fields and has become an indispensable resource. Yet, social networks are special by virtue of being specifically social, and our growing understanding of the brain is affecting our understanding of how social networks form, mature, and are exploited by their members. We discuss the expanding research on how the brain manages social information, how this information is heuristically processed, and how network cognitions are affected by situation and circumstance. In the process, we argue that the cognitive turn in social networks exemplifies the modern conception of the brain as fundamentally reprogrammable by experience and circumstance. Far from social networks being dependent upon the brain, we anticipate a modern view in which cognition and social networks coconstitute each other. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 46 is July 30, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Whether, How, and Why Networks Influence Men’s and Women’s Career Success: Review and Research Agenda

“…Second, we encourage future research to better understand whether and how men and women actors and contacts cognitively activate (and subsequently mobilize) subsets of their professional networks (for a review, see Smith, Brands, Brashears, & Kleinbaum, 2020). Our review reveals that men’s and women’s networks did not differ in their openness, structural status, or relative status; however, initial research suggests that women’s successfully mobilized networks are less open (Jadidi et al, 2018; Whittington, 2018) and include contacts with higher structural and relative status than men, impacting their productivity (Ghiasi et al, 2015; Whittington, 2018).…”

“…Thus, we encourage scholars to investigate which contacts men and women actors cognitively activate, which contacts they request resources from (mobilize), which resources they request and receive, and whether they are successful in mobilizing resources from certain contacts. Since men and women actors cognitively activate and mobilize contacts when facing a specific resource need or goal (Smith et al, 2020), future research may examine how the goals and/or resources sought impact this process.…”

Who Comes to Mind? Dynamic Construction of Social Networks

“…Oftentimes, an everyday task does not call to mind a person so much as a shortlist (“Who could I reach out to?”). Such mental shortlists—and the perceived structure therein—may affect subjective perceptions of social support (Lee, Stahl, & Bayer, in press), influence the expressions of stereotypes (Smith et al, 2020), or carry over to subsequent social interactions (Bayer, Hauser, Shah, O’Donnell, & Falk, 2019). Perhaps most notably, although past research has identified links between individual differences (e.g., extraversion, self-monitoring) and objective network structure (Brands, 2013), the cognitive mechanisms underlying actual network changes are poorly understood.…”

“…Additionally, the precise structure of an activated network may stem or prompt activation of further nodes; denser communities are more likely to result in more extensive activation of the potential network. In this way, the activation process can be bidirectional; structural aspects of the activated network may facilitate the retrieval of certain people and vice versa (see also Smith et al, 2020).…”

“…Despite multiple bodies of research exploring the psychology of social networks (e.g., Burt, Kilduff, & Tasselli, 2013; Mattan, Kubota, & Cloutier, 2017), how other people are arranged in our minds and how they affect social cognition in daily life is not well understood. Although substantial research has studied long-term social-network memory, we are just beginning to grasp how such information is retrieved and recoded in real time (Smith, Brands, Brashears, & Kleinbaum, 2020). The goal of this article is to elucidate the dynamic mechanisms of everyday social-network cognition and to begin mapping those mechanisms onto downstream outcomes.…”