Damon Centola is an American sociologist and the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania,"Damon Centola, Ph.D.". University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved November 7, 2016. where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.Network Dynamics Group Retrieved November 5, 2017
His research focuses on social networks, collective intelligence, behavior change, and complex contagions. He is the author of How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions (2018), Change: How to Make Big Things Happen (2021), and Goodthink: The New Science of Collective Intelligence (2026). In 2026, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Sociology.
Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, Centola was an assistant professor at MIT Sloan School of Management (2008–2013)Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office "Better health through social networking" MIT News. Retrieved September 3, 2010 and a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow at Harvard University.RWJ Scholars in Health Policy Research Program, Harvard University . Retrieved November 5, 2016
Early life and education Centola grew up in a Quaker community in the United States. He earned a bachelor's degree from Marlboro College before studying philosophy under Daniel Dennett at Tufts University. Prior to entering graduate school, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Centola later entered the Sociology Ph.D. program at Cornell University, where he studied under sociologist Michael Macy and was a Fellow in Cornell's National Science Foundation-funded Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program in Computational Social Science, led by Steven Strogatz. During his first year of graduate school, he co-authored The Emperor's Dilemma: A Computational Model of Self-Enforcing Norms with Michael Macy and Robb Willer. During his graduate studies, Centola was an Exchange Fellow at Columbia University, where he studied with sociologist Peter Bearman.
Career Centola works on complex contagions, collective intelligence, and experimental sociology. Complex contagions was the topic of his Ph.D. dissertation in sociology, supervised by Michael Macy at Cornell University. After completing his doctorate degree at Cornell, Damon spent two years as a Robert Wood Johnson Postdoctoral Fellow in Health Policy at Harvard University. He then joined the faculty of the Sloan School of Management at MIT in 2008.MIT News Office "Public-health networks". YouTube Retrieved November 07, 2016. In 2013, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communications and founded the Network Dynamics Group as a center for theoretical research with testable policy applications.
Complex contagions
Centola and Macy found that information and disease spread as "simple contagions", requiring only one contact for transmission, while behaviors typically spread as "complex contagions", requiring multiple sources of reinforcement to induce adoption. Centola's work builds on Granovetter's work on the strength of weak ties and threshold models of collective behavior, as well as Duncan Watts and Steve Strogatz's work on small world networks. Centola and Macy show that the weak ties and small worlds networks are both very good for spreading simple contagions. However, for complex contagions, weak ties and small worlds can slow diffusion.Centola, D.; Macy, M (2007) "Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties". AJS Volume 113 Number 3 (November 2007): 702–34. Centola used a network-based experimental method to test the theory of complex contagions and showed that predictions were confirmed.Centola, Damon (2010) "The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment". Science Vol. 329, Issue 5996, pp. 1194-1197 (September 2010)Centola, Damon (2018) "How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions". Princeton, NJ: Princeton University PressMarco J. van der Leij (2011) "Experimenting with Buddies". Science 2 December 2011: Vol. 334, Issue 6060, pp. 1220-1221, DOI: 10.1126/science.1214836
Centola's work on complex contagions also explores the importance of peer homophilyCentola, Damon (2010) "An Experimental Study of Homophily in the Adoption of Health Behavior". Science 2011 Vol. 334, Issue 6060, pp. 1269-1272 DOI: 10.1126/science.1207055 (September 2011) and structural diversity in the process of spreading behaviors.Ugander, Johan, Lars Backstrom, Cameron Marlow, and Jon Kleinberg (2012) "Structural Diversity in Social Contagion". PNAS April 17, 2012 109 (16) 5962-5966; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1116502109(April 2012)State, Bogdan, and Lada Adamic (2015) "The Diffusion of Support in an Online Social Movement: Evidence from the Adoption of Equal-Sign Profile Pictures". Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing Pages 1741-1750Centola, Damon (2010) "The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment". Science Vol. 329, Issue 5996, pp. 1194-1197 (September 2010)
Experimental sociology
Centola pioneered the use of large scale online networks as an experimental tool for identifying the dynamics of social change. To test the theory of complex contagions, Centola developed the method of "Internet Network Experiments", in which he constructed social networks within proprietary online communities to study how an innovation would propagate.Centola, Damon (2018) "How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions". Princeton, NJ: Princeton University PressMarco J. van der Leij (2011) "Experimenting with Buddies". Science 2 December 2011: Vol. 334, Issue 6060, pp. 1220-1221, DOI: 10.1126/science.1214836Centola, Damon (2013) "Social Media and the Science of Health Behavior". 28 May 2013 2013;127:2135–2144
Centola's first experimental sociology study conducted at Harvard University in 2010, called "The Healthy Lifestyle Network", constructed 12 independent online communities. This experiment showed that experimentally controlled variations in the structure of a network could control how far and how fast an innovation would spread. This was the first study to demonstrate the causal effects of network structure on the spread of behavior.Centola, Damon (2013) "The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment". Science (September 2010): Vol. 329, Issue 5996, pp. 1194-1197 DOI: 10.1126/science.1185231Centola, Damon (2013) "Social Media and the Science of Health Behavior". 28 May 2013 2013;127:2135–2144Jess McNally. "Cluster Networks Spread Behavior Change Faster" Wired. Retrieved September 2, 2010.Natasha Singer. "Better Health, With a Little Help From Our Friends" The New York Times. Retrieved September 18, 2010
In 2011, Centola showed that the same method could be used to causally identify the effects of network homophily on the spread of health innovations.Centola, Damon. (2011) "An Experimental Study of Homophily in the Adoption of Health Behavior". Science 02 Dec 2011: Vol. 334, Issue 6060, pp. 1269-1272 DOI: 10.1126/science.1207055Centola, Damon. (2018) "How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions". Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Marco J. van der Leij (2011) "Experimenting with Buddies". Science 2 December 2011: Vol. 334, Issue 6060, pp. 1220-1221, DOI: 10.1126/science.1214836
In 2015, he showed that this method could also be used to identify the causal effects of network structure in controlling the spontaneous emergence of new social norms.Centola, Damon and Andrea Baronchelli (2015) "The Spontaneous Emergence of Conventions: An experimental Study of Cultural Evolution". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (7): 1989-1994.Meeri Kim. "Why everyone started naming their kids Madison instead of Jennifer" The Washington Post. Retrieved Feb 7, 2015.Meeri Kim. "Behind the Ebb and Flow of Baby Names" The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved Feb 7, 2015.Carolyn Gregoire. "How Online Interaction Shapes Everything From Baby Name Trends To Revolutions" The Huffington Post. Retrieved Feb 6, 2015.
In a series of subsequent studies, he showed that the same method could be used to identify the causal effects of social networks on the creation of collective intelligence,Becker, Joshua, Devon Brackbill, and Damon Centola (2017). "Network dynamics of social influence in the wisdom of crowds" PNAS June 27, 2017 114 (26) E5070-E5076; first published June 12, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1615978114Becker, Joshua, Devon Brackbill, and Damon Centola (2017). "Reply to Bruggeman: Learning is robust to noise in decentralized networks" PNAS October 31, 2017 114 (44) E9184; first published October 26, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1714427114 the emergence of political polarization,Becker, Joshua, Ethan Porter and Damon Centola (2019). "The Wisdom of Partisan Crowds" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. May 28, 2019 116 (22) 10717-10722; first published May 13, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817195116Guilbeault, Doug, Joshua Becker and Damon Centola (2018). "Social learning and partisan bias in the interpretation of climate trends" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. September 25, 2018 115 (39) 9714-9719; first published September 4, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722664115Faye Flam. "He Seemed Like a Good Source, Until I Found Out He Was a Democrat" Bloomberg News. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2018.Carolyn Y. Johnson. "Bursting people's political bubbles could make them even more partisan" The Washington Post. Retrieved Sept. 7, 2018. and the identification of an exact "tipping point" for overturning an established social norm.Centola, Damon, Joshua Becker, Devon Brackbill, and Andrea Baronchelli. (2018). "Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social Convention" Science. 08 Jun 2018: Vol. 360, Issue 6393, pp. 1116-1119 DOI: 10.1126/science.aas8827Mark Wilson. "The Magic Number of People Needed to Create Social Change" Fast Company. Retrieved June 22, 2018.Ed Yong. "The Tipping Point When Minority Views Take Over" The Atlantic. Retrieved June 7, 2018.David Noonan "The 25% Revolution—How Big Does a Minority Have to Be to Reshape Society?" Scientific American Retrieved June 8, 2018.
Collective intelligence
In 2017, Centola and his graduate students Joshua Becker and Devon Brackbill found that the "wisdom of the crowd" could be improved by using communication networks and that the structure of the social network changed the intelligence of the group.Becker, Joshua, Devon Brackbill, and Damon Centola (2017). "Network dynamics of social influence in the wisdom of crowds" PNAS June 27, 2017 114 (26) E5070-E5076; first published June 12, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1615978114Becker, Joshua, Devon Brackbill, and Damon Centola (2017). "Reply to Bruggeman: Learning is robust to noise in decentralized networks" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. PNAS October 31, 2017 114 (44) E9184; first published October 26, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1714427114
Decentralized networks, in which everyone had the same number of connections and same level of influence, consistently produced group judgements that were more accurate than the standard "wisdom of the crowd". Centralized networks did not create these improvements because they gave a central, highly connected person more influence. Because of this disproportionate influence, they found that any errors by the central person would make the entire group underperform.
In 2020, Centola and Devon Brackbill published Impact of Network Structure on Collective Learning: An Experimental Study in a Data Science Competition, which found that less efficient communication networks outperformed more efficient ones on complex problem-solving tasks by promoting greater exploration of solutions before converging on the best-performing approaches.