Damon Centola

Damon Centola
Damon Centola
Born (1973-07-19) July 19, 1973
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Known forComplex contagions, collective intelligence, experimental sociology
Academic background
EducationCornell University (Ph.D.) (M.A.), Tufts University (M.A.), Marlboro College (B.A.)
ThesisElementary Forms of Collective Dynamics (2006)
Michael Macy
Academic work
DisciplineSociology
Sub-discipline
Agent-based modeling, web-based experiments (Internet experiments), complex contagions, social networks, social epidemiology
InstitutionsUniversity of Pennsylvania, MIT, Harvard University, Stanford University
Websitendg.asc.upenn.edu

Damon Centola is an American sociologist and the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania,[1] where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.[2]

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[3].

Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, Centola was an assistant professor at MIT Sloan School of Management (2008–2013)[4] and a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow at Harvard University.[5]

Early life and education

Centola grew up in a Quaker community in the United States. He earned a bachelor's degree from Marlboro College [6] before studying philosophy under Daniel Dennett at Tufts University[7]. Prior to entering graduate school, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institution[6].

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[8] (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 [9] with Michael Macy and Robb Willer. During his graduate studies, Centola was an Exchange Fellow at Columbia University[6], 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.[10] 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.[11] Centola used a network-based experimental method to test the theory of complex contagions and showed that predictions were confirmed.[12][13][14]

Centola's work on complex contagions also explores the importance of peer homophily[15] and structural diversity in the process of spreading behaviors.[16][17][18]

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.[19][20][21]

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.[22][23][24][25]

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.[26][27][28]

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.[29][30][31][32]

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,[33][34] the emergence of political polarization,[35][36][37][38] and the identification of an exact "tipping point" for overturning an established social norm.[39][40][41][42]

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.[43][44]

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[45], 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.

In 2022, Centola published The Network Science of Collective Intelligence[46] in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, a review that synthesized advances in network science research on collective intelligence and proposed a unifying framework for understanding how communication networks shape collective problem-solving and social learning.

In subsequent studies, Centola and his graduate students Doug Guilbeault and Joshua Becker showed that the same networked collective intelligence process worked to improve group judgements, even when participants initially had strong partisan biases.[47][48][49][50]

This line of research informed Centola's 2026 book Goodthink: The New Science of Collective Intelligence, which busts the myth of groupthink and argues that appropriately structured social networks can transform social influence into a mechanism for improving group decision-making, innovation, cooperation, and problem-solving.[51]

Norms and tipping points

In 2015, Centola and physicist Andrea Baronchelli showed that the network structure of an online community can control the ability for people to converge on a shared social norm.[52][53][54][55]

Centola and his team then used the same empirical design in 2018 to test Centola's theory of critical mass. Centola's theory predicted and showed that 25% of people need to adopt a new social norm to create an inflection point where everyone in the group follows. Results showed that by getting above the 25% tipping point, a committed minority can have rapid success in changing an entire population's opinion.[56][57][58][59][60][61]

In 2025, Centola and Douglas Guilbeault extended this line of research to online content moderation in Structural Synchronization in Classification of Controversial Content[62]. The study found that structurally similar communication networks independently synchronized on decisions about the classification and removal of controversial content, reducing partisan differences in moderation judgments and improving participants' experiences compared with individuals making decisions alone.

Centola's work on tipping points has been cited in discussions of social movements, including analyses of the #MeToo movement and the role of committed minorities in social change.[63]

Technologies

While affiliated with Tufts University, Centola contributed to the development of the NetLogo[6] agent-based modeling environment.

During his fellowship at Harvard University, Centola and Nicholas Christakis developed a network-based method for designing online social networks to promote the diffusion of desired behaviors. Their invention, Method and Apparatus for Influencing the Spread of Behavior in Online Social Networks, was the subject of a United States patent[64].

Awards

Damon Centola received the American Sociological Association's (ASA) 2017 James Coleman Award for Outstanding Article by the Rationality and Society Section,[65] and the 2018 Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Computational Social Science.

He received The American Sociological Association's (ASA) Award for Outstanding Article in Mathematical Sociology in 2006, 2009, and 2011,[66] and was awarded the ASA's 2011 Goodman Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Sociological Methodology.[67]

In 2019, he received the Harrison White Outstanding Scholarly Book Award for How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions[68].

In 2025, he received the Best Paper Award from the Journal of Social Computing for his paper Structural Synchronization in Classification of Controversial Content.[6]

In 2026, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[3]

Books

Centola is the author of:

  • How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions (Princeton University Press, 2018)
  • Change: How to Make Big Things Happen (Little, Brown Spark, 2021)
  • Goodthink: The New Science of Collective Intelligence (MIT Press, 2026)

References

  1. ↑ "Damon Centola, Ph.D.". University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
  2. ↑ Network Dynamics Group Retrieved November 5, 2017
  3. 1 2 "Announcing the 2026 Guggenheim Fellows — Guggenheim Fellowships: Supporting Artists, Scholars, & Scientists". Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 2026-07-27.
  4. ↑ Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office "Better health through social networking" MIT News. Retrieved September 3, 2010
  5. ↑ RWJ Scholars in Health Policy Research Program, Harvard University Archived 2016-11-10 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved November 5, 2016
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Centola, Damon (July 2026). "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Network Dynamics Group.
  7. ↑ "EACH". ccl.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2026-07-27.
  8. ↑ "Project Profile: Program in Nonlinear Systems 1". www.igert.org. Retrieved 2026-07-27.
  9. ↑ Centola, Damon; Willer, Robb; Macy, Michael (January 2005). "The Emperor's Dilemma: A Computational Model of Self-Enforcing Norms". American Journal of Sociology. 110 (4): 1009–1040. doi:10.1086/427321. ISSN 0002-9602.
  10. ↑ MIT News Office "Public-health networks". YouTube Retrieved November 07, 2016.
  11. ↑ Centola, D.; Macy, M (2007) "Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties". AJS Volume 113 Number 3 (November 2007): 702–34.
  12. ↑ Centola, Damon (2010) "The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment". Science Vol. 329, Issue 5996, pp. 1194-1197 (September 2010)
  13. ↑ Centola, Damon (2018) "How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions". Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
  14. ↑ 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
  15. ↑ Centola, 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)
  16. ↑ 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)
  17. ↑ 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 1741-1750
  18. ↑ Centola, Damon (2010) "The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment". Science Vol. 329, Issue 5996, pp. 1194-1197 (September 2010)
  19. ↑ Centola, Damon (2018) "How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions". Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
  20. ↑ 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
  21. ↑ Centola, Damon (2013) "Social Media and the Science of Health Behavior". 28 May 2013 2013;127:2135–2144
  22. ↑ 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.1185231
  23. ↑ Centola, Damon (2013) "Social Media and the Science of Health Behavior". 28 May 2013 2013;127:2135–2144
  24. ↑ Jess McNally. "Cluster Networks Spread Behavior Change Faster" Wired. Retrieved September 2, 2010.
  25. ↑ Natasha Singer. "Better Health, With a Little Help From Our Friends" The New York Times. Retrieved September 18, 2010
  26. ↑ 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.1207055
  27. ↑ Centola, Damon. (2018) "How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions". Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  28. ↑ 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
  29. ↑ 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.
  30. ↑ Meeri Kim. "Why everyone started naming their kids Madison instead of Jennifer" The Washington Post. Retrieved Feb 7, 2015.
  31. ↑ Meeri Kim. "Behind the Ebb and Flow of Baby Names" The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved Feb 7, 2015.
  32. ↑ Carolyn Gregoire. "How Online Interaction Shapes Everything From Baby Name Trends To Revolutions" The Huffington Post. Retrieved Feb 6, 2015.
  33. ↑ 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.1615978114
  34. ↑ Becker, 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
  35. ↑ 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.1817195116
  36. ↑ Guilbeault, 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.1722664115
  37. ↑ Faye Flam. "He Seemed Like a Good Source, Until I Found Out He Was a Democrat" Bloomberg News. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2018.
  38. ↑ Carolyn Y. Johnson. "Bursting people's political bubbles could make them even more partisan" The Washington Post. Retrieved Sept. 7, 2018.
  39. ↑ 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.aas8827
  40. ↑ Mark Wilson. "The Magic Number of People Needed to Create Social Change" Fast Company. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
  41. ↑ Ed Yong. "The Tipping Point When Minority Views Take Over" The Atlantic. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
  42. ↑ David Noonan "The 25% Revolution—How Big Does a Minority Have to Be to Reshape Society?" Scientific American Retrieved June 8, 2018.
  43. ↑ 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.1615978114
  44. ↑ Becker, 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
  45. ↑ Brackbill, Devon; Centola, Damon (2020-09-04). "Impact of network structure on collective learning: An experimental study in a data science competition". PLOS ONE. 15 (9) e0237978. Bibcode:2020PLoSO..1537978B. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0237978. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 7473554. PMID 32886685.
  46. ↑ Centola, Damon (November 2022). "The network science of collective intelligence". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 26 (11): 923–941. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2022.08.009. ISSN 1879-307X. PMID 36180361.
  47. ↑ Guilbeault, 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.1722664115
  48. ↑ Faye Flam. "He Seemed Like a Good Source, Until I Found Out He Was a Democrat" Bloomberg News. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2018.
  49. ↑ Carolyn Y. Johnson. "Bursting people's political bubbles could make them even more partisan" The Washington Post. Retrieved Sept. 7, 2018.
  50. ↑ Becker, Joshua, Porter, Ethan, and Centola, Damon (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.1817195116
  51. ↑ Centola, Damon (October 13, 2026). Goodthink: The New Science of Collective Intelligence. MIT Press (published October 2026).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  52. ↑ 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.
  53. ↑ Meeri Kim. "Why everyone started naming their kids Madison instead of Jennifer" The Washington Post. Retrieved Feb 7, 2015.
  54. ↑ Meeri Kim. "Behind the Ebb and Flow of Baby Names" The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved Feb 7, 2015.
  55. ↑ Carolyn Gregoire. "How Online Interaction Shapes Everything From Baby Name Trends To Revolutions" The Huffington Post. Retrieved Feb 6, 2015.
  56. ↑ Centola, Damon (2013). "Homophily, Networks, and Critical Mass: Solving the Start-up Problem in Large Group Collective Action" Rationality and Society. First Published February 18, 2013. (25) 3-40.
  57. ↑ Centola, Damon (2013). "A Simple Model of Stability in Critical Mass Dynamics" Journal of Statistical Physics. April 2013, Volume 151, Issue 1–2, pp 238–253
  58. ↑ 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.aas8827
  59. ↑ Mark Wilson. "The Magic Number of People Needed to Create Social Change" Fast Company. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
  60. ↑ Ed Yong. "The Tipping Point When Minority Views Take Over" The Atlantic. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
  61. ↑ David Noonan "The 25% Revolution—How Big Does a Minority Have to Be to Reshape Society?" Scientific American Retrieved June 8, 2018.
  62. ↑ Guilbeault, Douglas; Centola, Damon (2025-12-01). "Structural Synchronization in Classification of Controversial Content". Journal of Social Computing. 6 (4): 287–299. doi:10.23919/JSC.2025.0024.
  63. ↑ Yee, Vivian (2026-04-27). "Eric Swalwell, Tony Gonzales and the Post-Post-#MeToo Era". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-07-27.
  64. ↑ "U.S. Patent Application for Establishing a social network Patent Application (Application #20080270615 issued October 30, 2008) - Justia Patents Search". patents.justia.com. Retrieved 2026-07-27.
  65. ↑ The Section on Rationality and Society's James Coleman Award for Outstanding Article or Book American Sociological Association. Retrieved November 4, 2017.
  66. ↑ Section on Mathematical Sociology Outstanding Publication Award American Sociological Association. Retrieved November 4, 2017.
  67. ↑ The Section on Methodology's Leo Goodman Award American Sociological Association. Retrieved November 3, 2017.
  68. ↑ "How Behavior Spreads | Princeton University Press". press.princeton.edu. 2020-03-24. Retrieved 2026-07-27.
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