A Walk in the Woods: Persuasion and Learning in Newly Formed Friend Networks

Abstract

Past research suggests that individuals process information differently depending on their relationship with the source person. Having a closer relationship with the source is thought to affect credibility and memorability. An experiment tested these ideas by randomizing information propagation across 84 arbitrarily formed outdoor camping groups with 915 students. After partially measuring each group’s network of social ties, participants in our study evaluated a set of facts ostensibly shared by other students. Participants were later asked to recall these facts and their sources. Recall for ingroup sources was 27% more accurate than for outgroup sources. Recall and evaluations were also systematically different across four source types that varied in their relationships to the participant. Our network metrics were not predictive of recall and evaluations, which points to future directions for studying relationships in complete graphs.