Columns that reveal the world
- Getting up close and personal with the researchers -

Consider the following problem:

"You are on a voyage. One day, your ship is wrecked in a sudden storm and you are thrown into the sea. The next morning, you find yourself washed up on the shore and are woken up by a fellow passenger on the ship. You discover that you are on a deserted island, and the two of you start living together until rescue arrives. Then, six months later, there is another big storm, and the next morning you find a person collapsed on the shore. When you shake him, he regains consciousness. From now on, there will be no more than two people living on the island, but three. Will their lives be happier from now on?"

For now, think of the three people simply as "people", regardless of their gender.

Humans, being highly social beings, fear being lonely. When living together, even if we are dissatisfied with our partner, we instinctively cherish our one and only irreplaceable partner due to a certain latent fear that "if this person leaves, I'll be alone." Being "2" is accompanied by a "sense of death," and we always feel the need to cherish our partner.

On the other hand, when a third person is added, this interdependent balance is broken. In a three-person relationship, even if you have a big fight with one of the other two, or if one person disappears, you can continue your relationship with the remaining person, so you will not be completely isolated. Due to this lack of a "sense of death," the relationship between the three will be riddled with political disputes and maneuvering, and will inevitably end up with a "two friendly alliances" and "one common enemy." Paradoxically, having a "common enemy" allows the two to maintain a "strong cooperative relationship."

In mathematics, "1 + 1 + 1 = 3." This is true in algebra. In social networks, a relationship between three people is called a "triad," but in a three-person relationship in human society, "3" always equals "2 + 1." In other words, "1 + 1 + 1 = 3" does not exist in real human social relationships; it is always "3 = 2 + 1." In this way, a relationship between three people is much more complex than a relationship between two people, and there is a dynamic that cannot be explained by mathematics.

Therefore, the answer to the question is "Three people will have a worse life than two people."

Georg Simmel, a German who built the foundations of modern sociological theory, taught that in human society, "3" always equals "2 + 1." At the beginning of the 20th century, before the concept of a "network" even existed, he recognized the profound meaning of "associations" that exist between the individual and society, and explained society from that perspective. He left behind the profoundly meaningful statement that "society arises from the individual and the individualarises out of association."

Humans are inherently very social animals and cannot live in complete isolation in our daily lives. If we think about the relationships in our lives, we can understand that we are active as members of various networks every day, whether we are aware of it or not.

The types of networks that people belong to change over time. In particular, dramatic changes occurred during the transition from the Middle Ages to modern society, and the structure of these relationships has remained fundamentally unchanged even today in the Internet age.

In medieval Europe, people based their lives on the Christian church and lived with strong ties to their local communities through community networks that included the church, family and relatives, farming, etc. In these networks, which were based on blood and geographical ties, the members often overlapped, resulting in multiple networks overlapping in concentric circles (concentric).

Then, with the Industrial Revolution, many people moved their lives to cities as urban workers. For the first time in human history, people left strong ties such as blood ties and geographical ties, and began to live as city dwellers, belonging to multiple networks, such as workplace relationships, political organizations, social clubs, and intellectual salons, each with its own rational purpose for existence. Because each network has a different purpose for existence, there is little overlap between members, and the members of these networks are not concentric, but rather intersecting in a layered manner. This was a major change in social structure in the history of humankind.

When we focus on social networks, we can see a different side of society. The method of treating each individual, the subject of a single action, as a "node" (meaning "point," "junction," or "intersection"), measuring the relationships between them using various indicators, and visualizing them as a social graph (network graph), a correlation diagram that shows the relationships between the nodes as points and lines, is called social network analysis, and has been academically studied as economic sociology, mainly in Europe and the United States, in the fields of corporate management, strategy, and organizational communication.
In recent years in Japan, understanding of social media has only just begun to develop, with attention being paid to the spread of social media, the popularity of social business, the analysis of big data, and efforts to revitalize local communities.

In Japan, when we hear the term social network, it may bring to mind things like social networking sites and online communication, the word "kizuna" (bonds) that became popular after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and community design initiatives in regional cities. However, the concept's roots are in connection with organizational theory, business strategy, and corporate management, and it was developed mainly in Europe and the United States to understand the human relationships and communication within the organizations that make up a company, as well as inter-company relationships such as alliances (a strategic partnership, meaning "alliance" or "federation" in English) and keiretsu (groups of companies).

The famous "Hawthorne experiments," conducted in the 1930s and 1940s at Western Electric in Illinois, USA, were the first to clarify the meaning of social networks in relation to "business management."

One of these was an experiment to see what would happen to workers' productivity when the lights were dimmed while they were assembling parts. Everyone would have predicted that this would result in a decrease in productivity. However, contrary to expectations, the experimental results showed that productivity actually increased. The researchers from Harvard and MIT were troubled and ended the research at one point, but after thorough interviews with the workers a few years later, it became clear that they were happy that a renowned researcher had come and used their work as an experimental subject, and that they did not want to disappoint the researchers, so they made an effort to maintain their productivity even after it got dark.

We also conducted an experiment on how 14 people would work in the task of assembling and wiring a circuit board (Bank Wiring Observation Room). We determined the division of roles for assembly line work, and created a rule that wages would be paid if the entire group achieved a quota. If a production volume exceeded the quota, it would be evaluated as the performance of the entire group, and the individual would receive a share of the quota.

As the experiment was repeated, relationships that were different from the formal division of roles were formed among the 14 people. After analyzing seven types of networks, including those with whom they played poker during lunch breaks, those with whom they helped each other at work, and those with whom they argued, it was discovered that there were two groups with strong relationships. The figure on the right shows the different types of networks in the experiment of 14 people wiring circuit boards, drawn as network graphs. It is immediately clear that there are many different types of connections.

What was even more surprising was the existence of various "secret agreements" between them. For example, if they increased production efficiency too much, the production target would be raised from the next time and they would have to make more, so they should not work too hard. On the other hand, if they were too lazy, they would not receive wages, so they made up their own informal, unwritten rules to work at a moderate pace.

These experiments have revealed that the psychological state of workers has a significant impact on productivity as it motivates them to work, and that even when there are formal organizational rules, people actually create their own informal organizations and arrangements among themselves, and work proceeds within these networks. This shows that "management" is about dealing with human beings, who are greatly influenced by the "motivation" within their minds, and that even if you scientifically break down assembly lines and pay individuals fair wages based on the allocation of roles, as if you were treating a machine, the dynamics of the organization or group, and the dynamics of social networks as informal human relationships, have a decisive impact on workplace productivity.

From the perspective of economic sociology, all interactions between "people" as "nodes" are social networks, where various relationship dynamics arise, such as competition and cooperation between nodes. These are sometimes sensitive, diverse, and dynamically changing, and multifaceted, and understanding them is extremely important for individuals to live in modern society as members of society.

As a social science, "social network analysis" begins by considering social phenomena in terms of the relationship between two pairs of nodes. If investigating human relationships within an organization, the level of analysis would be the relationships between individuals. If the subject is a team within an organization, the level of analysis would be the relationships within the team and between teams. It is also possible to consider relationships between companies and even between countries; what is considered as a node in terms of the level of analysis is important, and a major feature of this approach is that it is possible to transcend the constraints of analytical levels such as micro and macro by using node pairs as the basic unit.

When a node performs some kind of social action and comes into contact with another node, a relationship is created between them. The number of nodes that make up the network, the relationship between pairs, the complex structure of parts and wholes, and how they are linked can be visualized and quantified as a social graph using "vertices" and "lines" (lines, edges, and arcs).

In real networks, connections such as empathy and camaraderie can lead to the spread of new innovations, but sometimes closed networks can lead to the concentration of power, creating dangers in group dynamics. By deeply understanding the meaning of social networks and applying them strategically, it is possible to bring about various innovations in society. In today's society, where information is increasingly being used and individuals are increasingly being managed, we hope that you will actively apply this knowledge as practical knowledge to realize a democratic and free society.

Social networks are extremely important for individuals and organizations as an invisible social structure at first glance. This research field has a history of about 100 years, and its application to organizational studies and business management has developed rapidly since the 1980s, mainly in American sociology, but unfortunately, its understanding is not very advanced in Japan. In order to create a society in which individuals can freely express their opinions and to survive as members of that society, I would like you to learn about the power and depth of social networks. I believe that understanding social networks will become increasingly important in the future, including in terms of understanding the importance of a social system that protects diversity and free communication, including the nature of communication in organizations, management strategies, and various social innovations.

(Published in 2013)