Anne ter Wal

Abstract

While networking is critical to accessing resources—such as information—in social settings, the mechanisms through which individuals resolve key behavioral tradeoffs remain unexplored. Individuals face the choice of deliberately pursuing interactions that may offer a benefit or letting interactions emerge spontaneously from the social context. They must also choose between letting selfish motivations or concern for others guide their networking actions. Using an interactive experiment with sociometric badges and random allocation to treatment conditions that vary the quality and salience of participants’ network knowledge, we explore which networking approaches are most effective for locating information and which approaches individuals follow in practice. Among individuals with high-quality network knowledge, we found little or no gap between effective and manifested behaviors: deliberate and selfish behaviors were common and paid off. Those with low-quality network knowledge were most effective if they made themselves available to spontaneous requests from others, as this altruistic approach generated goodwill and yielded valuable referrals. However, if this low-quality network knowledge was made more salient through planning, they tended to prioritize their own search over helping others, which compromised the number of referrals they received. Our findings contribute to understanding the role of agency and intentionality in networking.