Autologistic Actor Attribute Models (ALAAMs) provide new analytical opportunities to
advance research on how individual attitudes, cognitions, behaviors, and outcomes diffuse
through networks of social relations in which individuals in organizations are embedded.
ALAAMs add to available statistical models of social contagion the ...
Autologistic Actor Attribute Models (ALAAMs) provide new analytical opportunities to
advance research on how individual attitudes, cognitions, behaviors, and outcomes diffuse
through networks of social relations in which individuals in organizations are embedded.
ALAAMs add to available statistical models of social contagion the possibility of
formulating and testing competing hypotheses about the specific mechanisms that shape
patterns of adoption/diffusion. The main objective of this paper is to provide an
introduction and a guide to the specification, estimation, interpretation and evaluation of
ALAAMs. Using original data, we demonstrate the value of ALAAMs in an analysis of
academic performance and social networks in a class of graduate management students.
We find evidence that both high and low performance are contagious, i.e., diffuse through
social contact. However, the contagion mechanisms that contribute to the diffusion of high
performance and low performance differ subtly and systematically. Our results help us
identify new questions that ALAAMs allow us to ask, new answers they may be able to
provide, and the constraints that need to be relaxed to facilitate their more general adoption
in organizational research.