Social network data represent interactions and relationships among groups of individuals. One aspect of social interaction is social influence, the idea that beliefs or behaviors change as a result of one’s social network. The purpose of this article is to introduce a new model for social influence, the latent space model for influence, which employs latent space positions so that individuals are affected most by those who are “closest” to them in the latent space. We describe this model along with some of the contexts in which it can be used and explore the operating characteristics using a series of simulation studies. We conclude with an example of teacher advice-seeking networks to show that changes in beliefs about teaching mathematics may be attributed to network influence.

中文翻译：

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社会影响的潜在空间网络模型

社交网络数据代表个人群体之间的互动和关系。社会互动的一个方面是社会影响，即信仰或行为因个人社交网络而改变的想法。本文的目的是介绍一种新的社会影响模型，即影响的潜在空间模型，该模型采用潜在空间位置，使个人在潜在空间中受到与他们“最亲近”的人的影响最大。我们描述了这个模型以及一些可以使用它的环境，并使用一系列模拟研究来探索运行特性。我们以教师咨询网络的例子结束，以表明数学教学信念的变化可能归因于网络影响。