Social contagion

Metaphoric use connecting the concept of infection with imitation (mimesis) dates back at least to Plato, and continued into medieval and early modern literature.

The term "behavioural contagion" was first introduced into modern scholarship by Gustave Le Bon in his 1895 book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.

Herbert Blumer was the first to specifically use the term "social contagion”, in his 1939 paper on collective behavior, where he gave the dancing mania of the middle ages as a prominent example.

In a 1998 review, Paul Marsden suggested that social contagion is a similar phenomena to memetics, a field of study inspired by Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

Marsden suggested that the two fields could be complementary, in the sense that work on social contagion largely lacked a coherent theory, but contained much evidence based analyses.

From the 1990s and into the 21st century, interest in social contagion grew rapidly, based in part on cross fertilisation with the then emerging field of network science, especially its application to the internet.

[13][14] Scholars have long reported that the study of social contagion has suffered from the lack of a widely accepted and precise definition.

[note 1] In their 1993 review, Levy and Nail proposed that social contagion should be defined as the spread of affect, attitude or behaviour "where the recipient does not perceive an intentional influence attempt on the part of the initiator".

[1] Social contagion can be examined with threshold models based on how much exposure an individual needs before transmission of a behaviour or emotion occurs.

Multiple sources, especially close friends, can make imitation legitimate, credible and worthwhile due to collective effort put in.

It has been suggested as a way to assist in the rehabilitation of criminals and drug addicts, and as something that can encourage the adoption of climate friendly behaviour.

[23][24][25] Inside the scientific community the influence of social contagion of mental disorders like anxiety and depression is a topic of debate.