In the 1960s living conditions in some parts of the developing world were beginning to make serious progress. It wasn't terribly uniform, but some counties in Africa and Eastern Asia were feeling the impact of the green revolution, sanitation, and widespread immunization. Korea was at the leading edge, but there was this problem. A large percentage of the population was rural and agrarian. To deal with very high infant and childhood mortality rates families had an average of six or seven children. Now it was likely that the vast majority of those children would live and the fertility rate was the same. The Korean government was faced with a serious problem.
Other countries had the same problem. The standard approach was to shame people who had too many children and provide education about contraceptives through media campaigns. It was a tough slog with success rates somewhere between miserable and non-existant. Korea, on the other hand, had enormous success. All of their objectives were easily met inside of a single generation. What happened?
Although the Korean program was national, media campaigns were absent. It was felt a better approach would correspond to the village oriented makeup of the population. Information was provided to a few people in each village and then moved by peer to peer contact. Curiously, although most villages adopted some form of contraction, techniques varied widely from village to village. Pill villages, IUD villages, condom villages and so on. The villages with the strongest social networks saw the greatest degree of behavioral change.
There was an academic problem. Work on viral diffusion of information said that weak times would be a much more efficient mechanism for radiating information and changing behavior than these messier local and strong social ties. After all - there had been a lot of success predicting diffusion of contagions where weak ties spread diseases much more efficiently than strong ties. Think about a single plane with someone coughing ... And now millions will know about the best current cat videos inside of a day. And the six degrees...
Think about contagions. While they spread easily, convincing people to get immunized can be a difficult task and some groups adopt anti-scientific beliefs that can lead to breakdowns in herd immunity. Why doesn't that simple information spread as quickly? A high level answer moving simple information is very easy and weak tie networks are very effective. Behaviors tend to be much deeper than simple information and require richer contact often of several types. We use our close social networks .. the strong ties of close friends and family .. for behavioral reference and reinforcement.
I know an excellent science explainer. Make that world-class. Her parents love the beauty of Nature and moved to Hawaii before she was born. She returns regularly, but is a bit of the black sheep as they're religious fundamentalists and have come to believe that global warming and science in general are attacks on their belief and identify. (This linkage is almost uniquely North American. I've talked about it before and probably will again as it's both fascinating and frustrating.)
She was home a few months ago when a rare Hawaiian typhoon took a swipe at their island dumping three quarters of a meter of rain in a day. It is now possible to model how likely a storm like this could exist without global warming. In this case it was unlikely it would have happened without the current level of global warming. As the storm raged she broke down into tears. She shares their love of nature and the storm was a manifestation of change and destruction.
They watched and for the first time heard their black sheep science loving daughter. They're certainly not convinced. Being against a belief in global warming is part of their core identify. But she was able to chip away at their belief. Her strong tie with them is stronger than the (less strong) tie of their religion and much stronger than widely spread scientifically accurate but weak tied information about global warming.
Sometimes simple coded signalings to strong tie groups are sufficient to bring change. It seems likely that a lot of personal technology follows this path. Certainly one can signal to an existing tribe. If it's done in such a way to resonate with core beliefs it is possible to bring dramatic behavioral change. New work on behavioral change diffusion is emerging as people realize the current diffusion models don't always apply. Viral messaging and weak, but far reaching networked communications fail to describe much of what people actually do and particularly how behavior changes.
Social science isn't a "real" science if you compare them to the "hard" sciences. Human behavior is still far too complex. But progress is being made and a better understanding of how behavioral spreads will have deep implications. Contrary to what Malcolm Gladwell might say, viral information spreading isn't as effective as many think. (I keep thinking I should write something about Gladwell's books and talks, but...) If you wonder why your viral ad campaign didn't see any sales bump for your new gizmo, there may be a fundamental reason related to messaging.
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