Aslarus Isabella C, Son Jae-Young, Xia Alice, FeldmanHall Oriel
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
Sci Adv. 2025 Jun 20;11(25):eads2133. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ads2133.
While occupying an influential position within one's social network brings many advantages, it is unknown how certain individuals rise in social prominence. Leveraging a longitudinal dataset that tracks an entirely new network of college freshmen ( = 187), we test whether "climbing the social ladder" depends on knowing how other people are connected to each other. Those who ultimately come to occupy the most influential positions exhibit early and accurate representations of their network's general, abstract structure (i.e., who belongs to which communities and cliques). In contrast, detailed, granular representations of specific friendships do not translate into gains in social influence over time. Only once the network stabilizes do the most influential individuals exhibit the most accurate representations of specific friendships. These findings reveal that those who climb the social ladder first detect their emerging network's general structure and then fine-tune their knowledge about individual relationships between their peers as network dynamics settle.
虽然在个人社交网络中占据有影响力的位置会带来许多优势，但尚不清楚某些人是如何在社会中崭露头角的。利用一个追踪全新大一新生网络（N = 187）的纵向数据集，我们测试了“攀登社会阶梯”是否取决于了解其他人之间的联系。那些最终占据最有影响力位置的人，对其社交网络的总体抽象结构（即谁属于哪个群体和小团体）有着早期且准确的认知。相比之下，对特定友谊的详细具体认知并不会随着时间推移转化为社会影响力的提升。只有当社交网络稳定下来后，最有影响力的个体才会展现出对特定友谊最准确的认知。这些发现表明，那些率先攀登社会阶梯的人首先察觉到他们新兴社交网络的总体结构，然后随着网络动态趋于稳定，对同龄人之间的个人关系知识进行微调。
