Who knew that growing up and making friends and becoming who we are was not totally a random process. Was it possible that all our choices of the people we hang out with or not hang out with were based on homophily, a tendency in people to connect with others similar to themselves? As a child, I do not remember choosing friends based on their similar interests to me, but on how nice they were. So when did homophily start to affect my choices for friends or those who would remain as acquaintances or even strangers?
According to class lectures, homophily does not produce random uniform connections and is present if there are fewer connections between traits than those that are found if the connections were random. Connections between people may be built and developed based on their similar interests, but connections must also be formed as well as not formed based on other factors. As homophily is responsible for connecting people of similar interests it can also be responsible for the segregation that exists in today’s society. Whether it is segregation based on gender, cultural, social status, or one of the many types that people may have experienced, homophily may have played a part in it.
According to the scientific report “Structural transition in social networks: The role of homophily”, one of the aims of the paper was to show that segregation was due to homophily. The report mentioned that human traits can remain rigid as well can also evolve. The authors of the study chose to keep the human traits rigid to show that social ties affecting homophily are responsible for the segregation that exists. The report is very scientific with equations and graphs, but I shall mainly discuss the results that are of interest. The report mentioned that although humans have many traits, there are not really any particular traits that are important, that stands out when creating ties. The authors propose that the overlapping of communities of traits is a more realistic model of how society functions. Also that this connection of traits between nodes can become enhanced when the authors took into consideration the mechanism of local attachments, where there is an attachment emotionally by a person to a place. They also state that homophily and local attachment when combine together shows an increase in segregation.
According to the study, these egocentric networks showed that as in segregation as seen in figure (a) the nodes tend to connect to similar nodes with nearly identical traits with no connection to other communities. When there is a slight connection about 5% between the communities a pattern as shown in figure (b) is seen where communities are still clustered together. In figure (c), it can be seen that as the communities overlap, the nodes become less like their neighbouring nodes as compared to figure (a) where they were similar. In figure (d), as the features from different communities become more overlapped, the similarities between features of neighbouring nodes decrease. The study also mentioned that a decrease in the similarity of neighbouring features is also due to an increase in the ego’s diversity which is an important feature for a decrease in segregation.
If according to this study, homophily and local attachments together can increase segregation then according to the egocentric networks above it is possible to decrease it. It is likely that there are some people who would like to make more friends outside of their comfort zones. According to the study, the authors implied that to prevent the effect of segregation in our society people should support and promote cultural diversity. The report did not mention how to promote cultural diversity, but for me who is now aware of homophily’s existence and living in a country that embraces cultural diversity, I believe that cultural segregation can be tackled.
Learning about and participating in the languages and activities of the different cultures can increase the number of connections between nodes of a variety of traits thus decreasing some evidence of homophily and thus cultural segregation.
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Reference List
Murase, Y., Jo, H.-H., Török, J., Kertész, J., & Kaski, K. (2019, March 13). Structural transition in social networks: The role of homophily. Retrieved October 4, 2019, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40990-z.