Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Linearly increasing friend network size correlates with polynomial growth in
network connectivity. If humans have a finite cognitive capacity for memorizing
connection networks, one would expect significantly reduced accuracy in
perceiving friend networks. As Figure 2 shows, users with larger friend networks
do display small decreases in average accuracy, but that are not significant enough
to assume that the human capacity for understanding online friend networks is not
adaptable. Similarly, participants' high performance even when they have many
friends indicates significant intrinsic or trained ability.
Fig. 2
Presents the relationship between a participant's number of friends on the x-axis and
their overall perceptual accuracy on the y-axis. Increased number of friends is shown to
correlate with decreased accuracy in both low and high response users, and on both positive
and negative accuracy. (n = 166)
There exist two possible types of errors, false positives and false negatives and
two possible types of correct answers, accurate positives, and accurate negatives.
As Figure 3 shows, when participants claimed to be close to the two people
involved in the connection in question, their rate of false negatives dropped, while
their rate of false positives increased slightly. This data adds evidence to Janicik
and Larrick's [12] transitivity assertion, that when the participant knows both
people, a connection between them is assumed.
