***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****

This may also be related to the "friendship paradox", observed by Scott L.
Feld?
The paradox deals with the experiencing of friends with many friends and
contrasting them against one's own number of friends.

Feld, Scott L. (1991), "Why your friends have more friends than you do",
American Journal of Sociology 96 (6): 1464-1477,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781907

Best regards

Linda Reschke |

Universität Trier |
Forschungscluster der Universitäten Trier und Mainz
"Gesellschaftliche Abhängigkeiten und soziale Netzwerke" |
Universitätsring 15 | 54286 Trier

Kontakt: 0049-(0)651-201-2844 | [log in to unmask] |


----- Original Message -----
From: "Garry Robins" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 8:18 AM
Subject: [SOCNET] FW: Question regarding the human mind's capacity to make
sense of network structures


***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****

To me, the interesting question is not the "mind's capacity", but whether
there may be cognitive biasses in perceiving networks. That's why the
cognitive social structure work is relevant to this question. There is
evidence that we humans see networks as more structured than they actually
are (see Koehly & Pattison in Carrington, Scott and Wasserman, 2005; also
Kumbasar et al, 1994, which they cite.) Casciaro did some interesting work
on network perception in the 1990s. More recently, have a look at Igarashi
and Kashima (2011) in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
involving some network perception experimental manipulations and perceptions
of "group-ness". If you get down to specific types of network ties, then
Lutz and Lakey and colleagues have done some interesting work in regard to
social support networks, about the factors that lead individuals perceiving
that a social support tie is present.





Garry Robins

Professor

School of Psychological Sciences

The University of Melbourne

Australia



+61 3 8344 4454

http://www.psych.unimelb.edu.au/people/staff/RobinsG.html





________________________________
From: Social Networks Discussion Forum [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of
Marten Düring [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, 25 January 2012 11:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Question regarding the human mind's capacity to make sense of
network structures

***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** Hi all
I am wondering whether someone could point me to research on the human
mind's capacity to map and make sense of (social) network structures
independently from any external tools. In other words: Up to which number of
actors and ties are we able to understand network structures fairly well?

Thanks
Marten

--

........................................

Marten Düring

Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen
Goethestr. 31
45128 Essen

www.kulturwissenschaften.de<http://www.kulturwissenschaften.de>
www.memory-research.de<http://www.memory-research.de>
https://sites.google.com/site/historicalnetworkresearch

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