Social network based interventions for behaviour change

We are
interested in identifying mechanisms and developing models for social network
based interventions. Observing and measuring behaviour together with
communications through a social network enables us to disentangle influence and
selection processes in the network. However, if one wants to create behaviour
change intervention, which should work within, or be helped by, an existing
underlying social network, it is still a challenge to compute optimal “agents
of change”, and to come up with optimal strategies of spreading change.

In this project we are aiming to incorporate social psychological theories in the building of mathematical models of the spread of behavioural change through the networks, and to combine internal and external motivations for behaviour using agent-based modelling and small scale experimental studies.

We collaborate with Unilever Research and University of Bicocca-Milan, Department of Psychology.

By D.
Vukadinović
Greetham – Reading University