Pachur,T.
Schooler,L.J.
Stevens,J.R.

(from the chapter) In our work, we will focus on less well-studied features of networks: How connection strengths-that is, how often one has contact with a particular person-are distributed across network members as well as the network contact dynamics to which the distribution gives rise. Here we will examine to what extent a skewed distribution characterizes social contacts more generally. In addition, we will explore how the probability of contact with another person from one's social network can be predicted. In particular, we will examine the relationship between aspects of past contact and the probability of future contact and how this relationship can be described mathematically. Our investigation is motivated by previous analyses suggesting that characteristic patterns of memory performance are paralleled by patterns in the environment. These analyses highlighted the role of frequency, recency, and the spacing of events for predicting both the future occurrence of events and memory performance. Do such patterns exist for social environments as well? The design underlying some communication systems seems to be based on the assumption that they do. In many types of email software, email addresses from one's contacts are ordered by frequency of past contacts, assuming that the most frequent previous contacts are the most likely to be contacted in the future. Similarly, mobile phones allow for a quick access to the numbers of the most recent calls, implicitly assuming that these are also most likely to be used in the future. If statistical regularities between past and future contact indeed exist, and if these regularities correspond to those found for memory retrieval, they might be important variables for studying and understanding aspects of social decision making, such as how well simple heuristics perform in a social world and how they might exploit memory retrieval. In the following, we will report the results of an empirical study in which we found evidence for strong statistical regularities in human social contact. We will then discuss the potential implications of the regularities for social decision making and how they might be exploited by simple heuristics, especially those associated with cooperation. Finally, we will explore, based on a formal model of memory, to what extent the familiarity signal generated by traces of previous contacts can be used to reliably predict future social contact. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)

Pachur, T., Schooler, L. J., & Stevens, J. R. (2013). When will we meet again? Regularities of social connectivity and their reflections in memory and decision making. In R. Hertwig, U. Hoffrage, & the ABC Research Group, Simple heuristics in a social world (pp. 199-224). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Publication year	2013
Document type:	In book
Publication status:	Published
External URL:
Categories:
Keywords:	act-rcooperationenvironmentfrequencymemorypower lawsocial contactsocial networks