ABSTRACT
Interest in social networks and their analysis can be traced to the recognition that social relations affect human behaviour at multiple levels (Freeman 2004). It is not only that relations matter, but that considering human agents bereft of such relations (as independent of one another) biases our comprehension of their agency. Humans do not act as independent units and to account for their actions it is essential to capture the relations that create their social context. For instance, over the last decade, evidence has emerged of second and even third degree network effects on our conscious and unconscious choices (Fowler and Christakis 2009). Human agents are not only affected by their friends, but the friends of their friends and potentially even those further away on what is termed their horizon of observability (Friedkin 1998). Social animals have been hard wired to cooperate in groups of about 150 individuals (Hill and Dunbar 2003), and while in contemporary western societies humans interact with a multitude of this number, they lack the cognitive capacity to build strong ties beyond a select few. In other words, the relations humans maintain, are indicative of conscious or subconscious choices and knowing more about these relations can help us understand human action better.
