When you make a mistake about which of your acquaintances are friends with each other, you aren't actually wrong—you're likely just six months early.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
Errors in social network knowledge predict how ties evolve in the future
PsyArXiv · cs9ux_v1
The Takeaway
Researchers discovered that 'errors' in how people map their social networks—like incorrectly assuming two people are friends—actually predict which relationships will form half a year into the future. These mental mistakes are actually an adaptive 'link prediction' process that helps people anticipate and navigate social power before it even exists.
From the abstract
A striking feature of people’s social knowledge is that it is riddled with errors. These errors—e.g., making mistakes about who are actually friends in a social network—has typically been attributed to cognitive limitations or heuristics that prioritize knowledge of general social patterns over details about specific ties. Here, we demonstrate that such errors instead reflect an adaptive link prediction process that anticipates how the network will evolve far into the future. By longitudinally f