Social Influence Political Behavior Exam 2

Bacon number

the number of movies you have to pass through to connect one celebrity/actor to Kevin Bacon

Degrees of Separation

The number of people it takes to link someone to another

Small world networks

Relatively small shortest paths connecting one member of the network to another

Weak ties

Whatever flows through a networks tends to flow more effectively because of weak ties and their propensity to tie together parts of a network that would otherwise be separated

Transitivity

If there is a tie from a to b and a to c, there is also a tie from b to c

Columbia studies

Suggest that weak ties play a strong (correlational) role in shaping how people vote because weak ties are more likely sources of disagreement

Political discussion

Conversations that influence political ideologies and decisions

Political disagreement

Comes most often from weak ties, as they expose us to new info that friends may not

Michigan model

Magnified the individual and deemphasized social influence.

The American Voter

book, nationally representative  samples… but the surveys are just focused on the individual (small community with only 1 member out of 1000… going to skew results heavily towards that individual’s identity) 

Hindsight Bias

Believing that something that happened in the past was more predictable than it truly was prior to it occurring

Calibration

How well predicted probabilities align with observed frequencies

Fermi estimation

get better estimates, quickly by breaking an unknowable number into guessable pieces. (Finding relevant information that you know to shape guess)

Confirmation bias

seeking evidence (often unintentionally) that is likely to align with our beliefs or expectations

Probabilistic forecasts

Models predicting future outcomes in terms of percent chance it happens

Triangulation

a prediction strategy that incorporates multiple data sources, perspectives, and approaches (foxes and hedgehogs idea)

Fundamentals

 variables like the GDP, incumbency, approval ratings - things that are knowable months before elections and are relatively stable metrics.

Matthew Effect

Cumulative advantage but specifically regarding wealth

Halo effect

When your positive feeling toward a target on one dimension cause you to feel more positively toward the target on other dimensions