“Disastrous networks effect on human coordination in emergency response experiments”

Speaker: Hirokazu Shirado

Talk summary: In an emergency, social coordination is more important, but also more challenging than usual. To investigate under what conditions social networks improve coordination in emergency settings, we performed experiments involving a novel decision-making game simulating an unpredictable situation caused by a disaster. Subjects (n=2,648) decided whether to evacuate from a possible disaster with or without interpersonal communications. We also manipulated the structure of interpersonal communication in terms of network topology and size. We show that social networks suppress necessary evacuations with the spontaneous emergence of false reassurance instead of reducing needless evacuations. Social reinforcement with network transitivity promotes the spread of helpful behavior, but the effect is diminishing with as the network size increases. While social networks exceled at providing social supports, they worked poorly as information pathways of inconvenient truth.

Speaker bio: Hirokazu Shirado is a PhD student in Yale Sociology, working at YINS. His research focused on social networks and the implications of social network characteristics for network interventions. He is also interested in methodology development in experimental social science.

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