Mehrpour Anahita, Widmer Eric D, Staerklé Christian
Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
LIVES Centre, Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2025 Jan;64(1):e12833. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12833.
Over the last two decades, Social Network Analysis (SNA) has become a standard tool in various social science disciplines. In social psychology, however, the use of SNA methodology remains scarce. This research identifies gaps in SNA use in Social Psychology and offers pathways for its further development. It reviews all empirical papers using SNA published in high-ranking social psychology journals over the last three decades. Findings reveal that SNA has been used across striking diversity of fields and subdomains central to the discipline, confirming its relevance for any field in Social Psychology in which the role of interpersonal or intergroup relationships is central to understand psychological and behavioural outcomes. However, the use of SNA in Social Psychology has been mostly limited to non-experimental and non-longitudinal studies, using student samples and with a focus on basic measurements of network structures such as density and centrality. The contributions of SNA to the understanding of psychosocial mechanisms have therefore remained modest. We propose several strategies by which such gaps can be filled in future research and the full potential of SNA for social psychology realized.
在过去二十年中，社会网络分析（SNA）已成为各社会科学学科的标准工具。然而，在社会心理学领域，SNA方法的应用仍然很少。本研究找出了社会心理学中SNA应用方面的差距，并为其进一步发展提供了途径。它回顾了过去三十年在高排名社会心理学期刊上发表的所有使用SNA的实证论文。研究结果表明，SNA已被应用于该学科核心的众多不同领域和子领域，证实了其与社会心理学中任何人际或群体间关系的作用对理解心理和行为结果至关重要的领域的相关性。然而，SNA在社会心理学中的应用大多局限于非实验性和非纵向研究，使用学生样本，且侧重于网络结构的基本测量，如密度和中心性。因此，SNA对理解心理社会机制的贡献仍然有限。我们提出了几种策略，通过这些策略可以在未来研究中填补这些差距，并实现SNA在社会心理学中的全部潜力。
