The Psychology of Social Networks (KQED Talk)

Just wanted to share a quick note to the KQED/NPR radio talk on "The Psychology of Social Networks" (via Meghavini Shah, Thanks for the pointer!) 

Radio host par excellence,  Michael Krasny talks to

• B.J. Fogg, director of the Persuasive Technology Laboratory at Stanford University and the author of an upcoming book on the psychology of Facebook

• Sam Gosling, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin

They cover a wide range of topics and discuss the how social networks are changing the way we interact with each other. It is a really good show and I would highly recommend listening to it if you can.

Over the past few weeks, I have learned of many interesting anecdotal evidences about our online and offline behaviors and how social networks have become such an important part of the equation. I thought I would share it in the context of this talk. Here are a few noteworthy examples:

• Teenagers in India are socially quite comfortable expressing their relationship status on Facebook/myspace/orkut -- but would not reveal this information to their parents or family.
• Social networks have provided a socially acceptable setting for "checking out" profiles. Arranged marriages in India are still fairly common and it is not unusual for people to check out the profile, scraps and testimony pages of prospective partners before actually meeting them in person. I guess the same is true for dating in general, people judge you by not just who you are and how you look but also who your friends are (and I guess even how they look) and what they have to say about you.
• Coaches usually "friend" athletes on Facebook so that they can keep tabs on any parties that students have been going to and to check if they have a "red cup" in their hand (indicating that they have been consuming alcohol). Cell phone cameras are the easiest way for such information to leak onto Facebook. So parties these days have a "NO CELL PHONE" policy.
• Dont assume that your school teachers or professors dont know what Facebook is! Students found cheating on exams have been completely baffled to see that their profs actually checked their FB profiles to know if the students are friends -- despite their claims of innocence and that they dont know each other.
• Finally, at SocialDevCamp one really cool trend was that people were exchanging their Twitter ids more frequently than business cards. I am still enjoying the conversations that this community of users is having on Twitter. What would have been a one-off meeting is not a sustained community thanks to the power of social networks.

Footnote: Please consider supporting KQED or your local public broadcasting station, who bring to you such excellent programming.