When behaviour turns contagious: the use of deterministic epidemiological models in modeling social contagion phenomena

Abstract

Mathematical models offer crucial insights into the transmission dynamics and control of infectious diseases. These models have also been applied to investigate a variety of ‘contagious’ social phenomena like crime, opinions, addiction and fanaticism. We review the use and adaptation of models from epidemiology (compartmental models) to investigate the transmission dynamics of different social contagion processes- all of which are spread by contact only.