“Sex, Drugs, and Mobile Phones: Understanding Risky Behavior using Cell Phone Data”

Speaker: Trace Kershaw, PhD
Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Social and Behavioral Sciences); 
Director, Social and Behavioral Sciences Division

Talk Summary: This talk explores understanding and preventing risk behavior by understanding how networks of friends interact and influence each other using cell phone data (e.g., text messages, social network posts, GPS coordinates). The talk presents results from the CREW (Cell Phone Research to Enhance Wellbeing) study of a 120 young urban men who allowed full real time access to their cell phone data. The study subjects fell into 12 networks of friends, allowing the researchers to better understand how these peer groups influenced each other.

Bio: Trace Kershaw, PhD, specializes in the integration of sexual, reproductive, and maternal-child health. He is an expert in the role of interpersonal relationships on health and is currently studying the role of cell phones and social networks on health. He lectures internationally on these topics.After completing his PhD at Wayne State University, Professor Kershaw came to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA). Since then he has rapidly moved up the ranks to Associate Professor in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Director of CIRA’s Interdisciplinary Research Methods Core. He has been named both Mentor of the Year and Teacher of the Year and chairs the school’s diversity committee. He also serves on expert panels for the NIH and CDC and on several journal editorial boards.

“Language Styles and Friendship Networks”

Speaker: Balázs Kovács, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Organizations and Management
Yale School of Management

Talk Summary: Why do friendship networks form? Social scientists have documented multiple forces behind network formation, perhaps most importantly homophily: people similar in gender, age, nationality, body weight, or social class are more likely to become friends. This paper contributes to this literature by demonstrating that similarity in linguistic style also drives network formation. I analyze a large scale dataset of online reviews from Yelp.com, a platform in which reviewers can rate and review businesses such as restaurants, car mechanics, or hair salons, and a platform which simultaneously serves as an online social network interface where users choose their friends. I analyze with the LIWC computational linguistic framework the text of the 400k reviews by 40k reviewers, and show that similarity in the linguistic style of reviews by two reviewers increases the likelihood that they become friends. A friendship tie, in return, increases future similarity in linguistic style.

Bio: Balazs Kovacs is an Assistant Professor of Organizations and Management at the Yale School of Management. Prior to coming to Yale, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. He received his PhD in Organizational Behavior and MA in Sociology from Stanford University. He studies various topics in organization theory and sociology, including social networks, learning, diffusion, innovation, identity, culture, and status. He has published in leading management and sociology journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Management Science, Organization Science, and Social Networks. His research has been covered in major media outlets such as the Guardian and the New York Times.

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