Introduction
Recalling from Week 3 material about Triadic Closure, we know that if one node (say node A) has strong ties to both of the other two nodes (say node B and C), then there must be an edge between the other two nodes. Here, the edge between B and C can be strong tie or weak tie, where strong tie usually represents the close relationship like friendship, romantic relationship, or family interaction if the nodes are representations of people, while weak tie usually connects acquittance in your life who you know but not that familiar to. For normal people, we care about others who we are close to much more than we care about acquittance. This is also an intuitive explanation why the edges representing acquittance relationship are weak ties. However, no one in your life is born to share a strong tie with you (i.e., be in your close relationships) except your family members. Thus, here in this blog, we would like to talk about the reason why weak ties exist in our life and the conditions under which the weak ties will or will not turn into strong ties.
Why do Weak Ties exist if they are “weak”?
To give a definition of weak ties (i.e., acquittance in our case), we can use the Convoy Model (Figure1 below) from Antonucci, 1986. The inner circle and middle circle include the people who are close to us and have an important role in our life while the outer circle represents the people whose existence is known but not cared by us. Those people in the outer circle are the acquittance we defined here.
(Figure1: Convoy Model from Antonucci, 1986)
We learned from Six Degree in lecture that the information provided by our acquittance usually differ largely from what we get from our close relationships. This can be simply proved by intuition. Assume in contraction that the information provided by acquittance are similar to (or at least not that different from) the information we get from strong ties. Then, it is obvious that people will prefer their strong ties for the same information comparing to their weak ties, considering the trust and closeness they share among strong ties. Thus, the weak ties are not that useful in people’s lives, and everyone no longer needs the weak ties anymore. This could result in the “endanger” of weak ties. However, we do have weak ties and we can say that our assumption of the similarity of information from both acquittance and strong ties is wrong. Therefore, it is necessary to have weak ties in our life and weak ties are not that “weak” in their influence. If people can get similar information from their strong ties, why would they still keep in touch with those who can not help them at all?
Besides the usefulness of the information provided by weak ties, we cannot ignore the support given by weak ties. Sprecher mentioned in her article about the impact of weak ties on happiness and positive emotion, which can be found use the link in the reference (she also mentioned the unwanted acquittance/weak ties, which I think is also an interesting topic to read).
Conditions under which the Weak Ties will (not) turn into Strong Ties
The social penetration theory by Altman and Taylor stated that people’s interaction follows an order of “depth after breadth” (model in Figure2), which means people will first exchange information of various topics and subjects when they are acquittance and increase the time spending together while sharing more valuable information of certain topics. This can be interpreted as the transferring process from weak ties (when only superficial but novel information is shared) to strong ties (when more common but resonant information is shared).
(Figure2: the Social Penetration Model)
The most common condition for weak tie to turn into strong tie is a turning point, which can be interpreted as an influential event between people with their acquittance. Take the example of job application we learned in lecture, after you get the information from your weak tie about a job position and get employed in that position after applying, you probably will send your gratitude to that acquittance for the shared information. Why does that acquittance know about the job information? Probably because he or she is in the company or organization which is hiring. Thus, you and your acquittance became colleagues working in the same company. During lunch time, it’s not hard for you two to meet and have lunch together while making a conversation about your working environment or sharing rumors about your common coworkers. While talking to each other, you realized that you two have similar taste for working or you two share common “enemy” (“your enemy’s enemy is your friend” – another theory on Positive/Negative Relationships of Week4). Thus, you two become close friends (i.e., strong tie) beyond colleague relationship (i.e., weak tie), and the job information sharing and the lunch-conversion are the two turning events of your relationship.
The whole process went smoothly and the only thing uncertain is the turning point event. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the possibility of such turning event when evaluating the chance for people to develop strong ties from their existing weak ties.
Conclusion
Just like the impact of strong ties on people’s life, weak ties are necessary as well. The existence of weak ties is not only because of the formation of triadic closure, but also the intuitive consequence of people’s networking. Also, under certain circumstances like turning events we have mentioned above, the weak ties will turn into strong ties.
Reference
Sprecher, S. (2022). Acquaintanceships (weak ties): Their role in people’s web of relationships and their formation. Personal Relationships, 29(3), 425–450. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12430
Fuller, H. R., Ajrouch, K. J., & Antonucci, T. C. (2020). The Convoy Model and Later‐Life Family Relationships. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 12(2), 126–146. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12376