Theory and Tools for Studying Social-Cognitive Structure in Network Perceptions

Network perceptions offer a distinct view into peoples ’social worlds by capturing how each individual in a population perceives their social environment differently. In a departure from the existing literature on network perceptions, this MWG will examine variation amongst these perceptions not as errors or inaccuracies but as informative of a broader organizing structure. Network perceptions reveal not only distinct views of social structure, but also the cognitive structure underlying how these views are shared between individuals. This MWG will focus on considering both structures—the social-cognitive structure—as mutually informative in describing how people experience their social worlds.

By bringing together participants across sociology, network science, and social psychology who focus on different, but complementary, aspects of social cognition and social structure, this MWG will work to develop an integrated framework of social-cognitive structure. This MWG will focus on developing theory for identifying and interpreting social-cognitive structure while simultaneously considering the limitations and opportunities in data collection techniques and data analysis tools.