When it comes to social influence, what type of people lead and who follows? It’s a question pondered by parents and marketing companies alike. Researchers at NYU sought to figure it out by tracking more than a million users on Facebook. Sinan Aral, a NYU Stern assistant professor of information, operations and management sciences, and Dylan Walker, a research scientist at Stern, started out with 7,730 users of a single Facebook app that allowed them to rate movies, actors and other Hollywood types. Each time the user rated something, Facebook would randomly send a message to some of that user’s friends with the user’s rating and information about the app — about 42,000 messages were sent to 1.3 million friends. The idea was to see who among the network was mostly likely to be convinced to try the app too. Overall, the researchers found, the app wasn’t overwhelmingly popular. Just under 1,000 people signed up to use the app. But the scientists were still able to see how influence spread and pick out certain patterns in who was mostly likely to influence whom. (MORE: The Upside of Peer Pressure: Social Networks Help Kids Exercise More) Among the study’s findings: —Men are overall 49% more influential than women, but women are 12% less susceptible to influence than men —Women exert 46% more influence over men than over other women —Single and married people are more influential than others: Single people are 113% more influential than people “In a relationship” and 128% more influential than those whose status reads “It’s complicated” Married people are the most influential people of all: 140% more so than those in a relationship and 158% more than the “It’s complicated” group —”It’s complicated” types were the least influential and the most likely to be influenced by others; the opposite was true for married folks, who are not only the most influential, but also the least susceptible to others’ influence —Older people — anyone over 30 — are more influential and less susceptible to influence than younger people —Influence![]()
