A Field Experiment of Social Influence and Behavioral Contagion with Bots on Reddit

Jul 16, 2026

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The paper studies how social influence and behavioral contagion operate in online communities by running a field experiment on Reddit. Apparent human and bot accounts award symbolic recognition to users using four rationales: praise for logical arguments, praise for emotional sensitivity, praise for moral integrity, or a lottery-based random draw explanation. Outcomes are measured through recipients’ subsequent activity volume, impact, and content, along with downstream spillovers to other users. Results show awards do not raise activity or impact, and bot lottery awards can reduce them, while still increasing direct user communication.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

Abstract

Introduction

Social influence and human–machine interaction

Experimental design and intervention rationales

Expected differences by framing and agent type

arXiv :2607 .00854v 1 [ cs . SI] 1 Jul 2026 A field experiment of social influence and behavioral contagion with bots on Reddit Hiroki Odaa , Kinga Makovia,b , Taha Yasseric,d , and Milena Tsvetkovaa,e,* a London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK b New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE c Centre for Sociology of Humans and Machines, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland d School of Mathematics and Statistics, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland e Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria * To whom correspondence should be [addressed: m.tsvetkova@lse.ac.uk](addressed: m.tsvetkova@lse.ac.uk) Abstract Recent advances in AI have heightened scholars’ and policy makers’ concern with social influence and behavioral contagion in online communities. We conduct a field experiment on Reddit to investigate the extent to which online users are susceptible to positive behavioral stimuli from other users and artificial agents. We let apparent human and bot accounts give symbolic awards to users with one of four rationales: praising the recipient’s logical argument, emotional sensitivity, or moral integrity, or explaining that the award resulted from a random draw in a lottery. We evaluate how the different rationales for the award affect the recipients’ subsequent behavior on the platform in terms of volume, impact, and content, as well as the further behavioral contagion to other users. We find that awards do not increase user activity and downstream impact, and awards from bots with the lottery rationale can in fact reduce them. Nevertheless, awards encourage direct communication between users. These findings highlight the possible resilience of online users to simple behavioral manipulation from platform algorithms and artificial agents, but not necessarily to more sophisticated schemes that simulate human conversation. Transparently labeling automated agents remains essential for ethical and effective platform governance. 1 Introduction From fake accounts on social media and generative-AI chatbots to self-driving vehicles on the roads and trading algorithms in global markets, modern society has become a hybrid social system of humans and intelligent machines who interact with and influence each other.1–3 Under certain conditions, intelligent machines may affect how humans make decisions and act, and even if weak, this influence can cascade in social networks, producing palpable macro-level consequences. While some research finds that humans treat and respond to machines similarly to other humans,4–6 other work identifies notable differences between human-human and human-machine interactions.7–9 To grasp today’s social world, we need to understand how intelligent machines influence and affect human behavior and what consequences this influence has for social groups, networks, communities, and society at large. In this study, we investigate whether social influence and contagion differ between human and artificial influencers for different rationales of action through a field experiment in a large online community with an endemic bot population. We create apparent bot and human user accounts on the online news sharing and discussion forum Reddit and let them give symbolic awards to users with different stated justification, presupposing evaluation of rationality and logical reasoning, adherence to a procedure, albeit arbitrary, understanding of emotional states, or capacity for moral judgement. We evaluate how the randomized interventions affect the volume, impact, and content of subsequent contributions by the award recipients, as well as any spill-over effects to other users. There are several arguments why we expect influence from machines versus humans to differ for different action framings. Prior research suggests that humans perceive and judge intelligent machines differently from how they perceive and judge other humans. To begin with, humans do not ascribe moral agency

FAQs

What is the main goal of the field experiment on Reddit?

To measure how susceptible users are to positive behavioral cues from other users and artificial agents, and how those cues affect subsequent user behavior and spillovers.

How were the bot and human accounts used in the study?

The researchers created apparent human and bot accounts that delivered symbolic awards to users, each tied to one of four stated rationales.

What effects did the awards have on recipients and downstream users?

Awards did not increase user activity or downstream impact; bot awards using the lottery rationale could reduce them, though awards increased direct communication between users.

Jul 16, 2026

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