Penn News Release: Study finds surprise source of social influence

From the Penn News Release: Imagine you’re a CEO who wants to promote an innovative new product — a time management app or a fitness program. Should you send the product to Kim Kardashian in the hope that she’ll love it and spread the word to her legions of Instagram followers? The answer would be ‘yes’ if successfully transmitting new ideas or behavior patterns was as simple as showing them to as many people as possible. However, a forthcoming study in the journal Nature Communications finds that as prominent and revered as social influencers seem to be, in fact, they are unlikely to change a person’s behavior by example — and might actually be detrimental to the cause. Why? “When social influencers present ideas that are dissonant with their followers’ worldviews — say, for example, that vaccination is safe and effective — they can unintentionally antagonize the people they are seeking to persuade because people typically only follow influencers whose ideas confirm their beliefs about the world,” says Damon Centola, Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology, and Engineering at Penn, and senior author on the paper. Read the full story on Eurekalert!