laws of imitation
E938800
The laws of imitation are Gabriel Tarde’s foundational sociological principles explaining how social behavior, ideas, and innovations spread through patterned imitation among individuals.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| laws of imitation canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T11645956 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: laws of imitation Context triple: [Gabriel Tarde, hasConcept, laws of imitation]
-
A.
On Imitation
"On Imitation" is a lost rhetorical treatise by the ancient Greek critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus that discussed literary style and the principles of imitating classical authors.
-
B.
Law of the Maximum
The Law of the Maximum was a French Revolutionary price-control measure that fixed maximum prices on essential goods to curb inflation and protect the urban poor.
-
C.
Lusser's law
Lusser's law is a reliability engineering principle that states the overall reliability of a system is the product of the reliabilities of its individual components, highlighting how system reliability decreases as more components are added in series.
-
D.
Aitken’s Law
Aitken’s Law is a phonological rule in Scots and Scottish English that governs when vowels are pronounced long or short depending on their phonetic and morphological environment.
-
E.
Szemerényi's law
Szemerényi's law is a sound law in Proto-Indo-European linguistics that explains the loss of certain final consonants with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: laws of imitation Target entity description: The laws of imitation are Gabriel Tarde’s foundational sociological principles explaining how social behavior, ideas, and innovations spread through patterned imitation among individuals.
-
A.
On Imitation
"On Imitation" is a lost rhetorical treatise by the ancient Greek critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus that discussed literary style and the principles of imitating classical authors.
-
B.
Law of the Maximum
The Law of the Maximum was a French Revolutionary price-control measure that fixed maximum prices on essential goods to curb inflation and protect the urban poor.
-
C.
Lusser's law
Lusser's law is a reliability engineering principle that states the overall reliability of a system is the product of the reliabilities of its individual components, highlighting how system reliability decreases as more components are added in series.
-
D.
Aitken’s Law
Aitken’s Law is a phonological rule in Scots and Scottish English that governs when vowels are pronounced long or short depending on their phonetic and morphological environment.
-
E.
Szemerényi's law
Szemerényi's law is a sound law in Proto-Indo-European linguistics that explains the loss of certain final consonants with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (48)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
social psychology concept
ⓘ
sociological theory ⓘ |
| appliesTo |
formation of public opinion
ⓘ
spread of artistic styles ⓘ spread of deviant behavior ⓘ spread of linguistic habits ⓘ spread of religious movements ⓘ spread of technological innovations ⓘ |
| author | Gabriel Tarde ⓘ |
| component |
law of adaptation
ⓘ
law of close contact ⓘ law of imitation of superiors by inferiors ⓘ law of insertion ⓘ |
| contrastsWith | Émile Durkheim’s emphasis on social facts ⓘ |
| coreIdea |
ideas and innovations diffuse via patterned imitation
ⓘ
imitation is a fundamental social process ⓘ social behavior spreads through imitation ⓘ social order emerges from repeated acts of imitation ⓘ |
| describes |
spread of beliefs
ⓘ
spread of criminal behavior ⓘ spread of customs ⓘ spread of fashions ⓘ spread of inventions ⓘ spread of social innovations ⓘ |
| emphasizes |
interpersonal influence
ⓘ
micro-level interactions between individuals ⓘ repetition of examples ⓘ role of prestige in imitation ⓘ role of proximity in imitation ⓘ |
| field |
criminology
ⓘ
social psychology ⓘ social theory ⓘ sociology ⓘ |
| formulatedBy | Gabriel Tarde ⓘ |
| influenced |
criminological theories of differential association
ⓘ
cultural diffusion studies ⓘ diffusion of innovations theory ⓘ social learning theory ⓘ |
| languageOfOriginalFormulation | French ⓘ |
| mainWork | Les Lois de l’imitation ⓘ |
| ontology | interactionist ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1890 ⓘ |
| relatedConcept |
behavioral diffusion
ⓘ
memetics ⓘ norm diffusion ⓘ social contagion ⓘ |
| status | classical sociological theory ⓘ |
| theoreticalLevel | micro-sociological ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: laws of imitation Description of subject: The laws of imitation are Gabriel Tarde’s foundational sociological principles explaining how social behavior, ideas, and innovations spread through patterned imitation among individuals.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.