Center for Social Data Analytics Colloquium speaker: Jennifer Larson

The Center for Social Data Analytics will be hosting Jennifer Larson, as our next guest speaker in our Fall semester lecture series. Her talk "It Takes a Network to Change Intergroup Attitudes" will be held on Thursday, October 29, from Noon- 1:00 pm in 421 SWLAB.

If you are unable to join us in person, you may attend virtually via Zoom using the link below:

https://psu.zoom.us/j/99245001961?pwd=endWOTc3Wm5PYTJQRXJWWlpIQkdJUT09

Abstract: Attitudes toward outgroups have important consequences for conflict, cooperation, and social cohesion. Yet attitudes are not formed or changed in isolation: individuals care about others' views and how their own views are perceived. We develop a theory of individual attitude change that incorporates the attitudes of key social referents and beliefs about those attitudes, generating predictions about how network ties shape individual and collective attitude change. We test these predictions using a field experiment in Uganda that combines a perspective-taking intervention with detailed social network data. We find that longer-term attitude change depends on the reactions of social ties, operates through beliefs about others' attitudes, and can be accelerated by social reinforcement. At the community level, change depends on the social interactions' interventions trigger, the information they reveal, and the structure of the underlying network. These findings inform theories of social influence and intervention design.

Bio: Jennifer Larson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and a faculty affiliate of Vanderbilt’s Data Science Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University and a B.A. in mathematics and political science from Creighton University. Her research examines how social networks shape political behavior and outcomes, including ethnic conflict, protests, and social cohesion. She is also the author of Designing Empirical Social Networks Research, a guide for researchers interested in studying social networks. Her recent work, supported by the National Science Foundation and UK International Development, explores the social dynamics of attitude change, examining how interpersonal networks shape the effects of interventions designed to improve attitudes toward refugees in rural Uganda. Findings from this work have been published in the American Political Science Review and Network Science.