How change spreads, or doesn't

Book review of Change: How to make big things happen

One certainty in modern life, apart from death and taxes, is change. It’s like a wave: Ride it and it could carry you a long way; resist it and you risk being relegated to the bottom.

Besides accepting the inevitability of change and adapting to it, we also need to understand how it works. What makes humans discard long-held beliefs and norms and adopt new ones? Why do some trends catch on, capture the popular imagination and spread like wildfire, while others wither away? And what role do networks play in their spread? These are some questions Damon Centola, professor in the Department of Sociology at California-based Annenberg School of Communication, addresses in this book.

One widespread belief people have is that new behaviours, norms and trends spread like viruses. We come into contact with something new, pass it on to those whom we know, and the chain grows. According to the author, the viral metaphor holds true only for the dispersal of simple ideas and information, like news of a natural calamity, a celebrity romance, a meme, or a joke. He labels them “simple contagions”. They spread easily and rapidly but do not leave a lasting impact on behaviour and practice.

 What happens when the goal is to get people to adopt a new way of behaving that goes contrary to deeply-entrenched beliefs? When switching to an innovation will cost time, money, and effort, and the price for being wrong is considerable? Mr Centola refers to such changes as “complex contagions”. He explains that people will not accept them merely because they have been exposed to them. In such situations, he says, people look to their network for confirmation. If a large percentage adopts the new trend, they may also become amenable to adopting it.  

Another notion the author debunks is “the myth of the influencer”.  Most of us believe that social stars—successful people we look up to—can play a big role in ushering in change. This is the belief that underpins the widespread use of celebrities in advertising.      

Change: How to make big things happen 

Author: Damon Centola

Publisher:  Hachette India

Pages: 343; Price: Rs 599

The author argues that the opposite holds true in many circumstances. Influencers are unlikely to embrace a radical change early on. They typically have large networks. If an influencer has 100 people in his network and only four adopt a new trend, that is, 4 per cent of his network. With so many countervailing influences (96 per cent), a social star is unlikely to adopt a new trend early on. A normal person tends to have a smaller network. If four out of the 10 people in his circle adopt a new trend, that is 40 per cent of his network. Such a person is more likely to get influenced into adopting the trend. Moreover, the stakes are higher for social stars. If the trend does not gain widespread currency, they risk looking ridiculous—something they can ill afford.

 According to the author, it is people at the periphery—who have smaller networks and less to lose—who tend to be early adopters. Only after an innovation achieves critical mass do social stars adopt them. Many people believe it was Oprah Winfrey’s adoption of Twitter that gave the microblogging site a fillip. The reality was that by the time she came onboard, Twitter had already entered a high-growth phase.

The author makes a distinction between weak and strong ties. Simple contagions can spread through weak ties. If you are looking for a job, your network of weak ties could prove useful. But complex contagions tend to spread through networks of strong ties. 
 

 A person’s strong network tends to be smaller in size. But it is when the same idea is reinforced multiple times—several people within it recommend the idea—that he adopts it. In Korea in the 1960s, for instance, households adopted contraception when reinforcement came from tightly-knit women’s groups within villages.

 The book also takes on the myth of stickiness. Popular belief has it that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Alas, this does not always hold true or else many housewives would give McDonald’s a run for its money. The Dvorak keyboard is far superior to Qwerty, and yet very few use it. The author attributes this to the power of incumbency: Once a product or idea takes hold in crucial parts of the relevant network, it is difficult to dislodge it.

Mark Twain said: “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” On subjects such as change, to which most of us have given only cursory thought, we are often willing to accept facile explanations. Reading this book will disabuse you of many long-held notions that just ain’t so.