Homophily

Homophily from Ancient Greek ὁμοῦ (homou, "together") and Greek φιλία (philia, "friendship") is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, as in the proverb "birds of a feather flock together".[1] The presence of homophily has been discovered in a vast array of network studies. More than 100 studies have observed homophily in some form or another and they establish that similarity is associated with connection.[2] The categories on which homophily occurs include age, gender, class, and organizational role.[3]

Not to be confused with Homophile.
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Individuals in homophilic relationships share common characteristics (beliefs, values, education, etc.) that make communication and relationship formation easier. The opposite of homophily is heterophily or intermingling.

Homophily between mated pairs in animals has been extensively studied in the field of evolutionary biology, in which it is known as assortative mating. Homophily between mated pairs is common within natural animal mating populations.[4]

Homophily has a variety of consequences for social and economic outcomes, ranging from facilitating cooperation[5] to slowing processes of consensus-formation,[6] among many others.

Types and dimensions

Baseline vs. inbreeding

To test the relevance of homophily researchers have distinguished between baseline homophily and inbreeding homophily. The former is simply the amount of homophily that would be expected by chance given an existing uneven distribution of people with varying characteristics, and the second is the amount of homophily over and above this expected value, typically due to personal preferences and choices.[2]

Status vs. value

In their original formulation of homophily, Lazarsfeld and Merton (1954) distinguished between status homophily and value homophily.[7]

The authors find that individuals with similar social status characteristics are more likely to associate with each other than by chance. "Status" includes both ascribed characteristics like race, ethnicity, sex, and age; and acquired characteristics like religion and education.[2][7] In contrast, value homophily involves association with others who think in similar ways, regardless of differences in these status characteristics.[2][7]

Race and ethnicity

Social networks in United States today are strongly divided by race and ethnicity,[8] which account for the greatest proportion of inbreeding homophily (though classification by these criteria can be problematic in sociology due to fuzzy boundaries and different definitions of race). Smaller groups have lower diversity simply due to the number of members, and this tends to give racial and ethnic minority groups a higher baseline homophily. Race and ethnicity also correlates with educational attainment and occupation, which increase baseline homophily further.[2]

Sex and gender

With regard to sex and gender, baseline homophily of networks is relatively low compared to race and ethnicity. Men and women frequently live together, and are both large and equally-sized populations. Most sex homophily is of the inbreeding type.[2] In schools especially, students tend to have a high gender homophily.[9]

Age

Most age homophily is of the baseline type. An interesting pattern of inbreeding age homophily for groups of different ages was found by Marsden (1988).[10] It indicated a strong relationship between someone's age and the social distance to other people with regard to confiding in someone. For example, the larger age gap someone had, the smaller chances that they were confided by others with lower ages to "discuss important matters".[2]

Religion

Homophily based on religion is due to both baseline homophily and inbreeding.[2]

Education, occupation and social class

Family of birth accounts for considerable baseline homophily with respect to education, occupation, and social class.[2]

Social media

As social networks are largely divided by race, social networking websites like Facebook are also fostering homophilic atmospheres.[11] When a Facebook user likes or interacts with an article or post of a certain ideology, Facebook continues to show that user posts of that similar ideology (that Facebook believes they will be drawn to). In their research article titled "Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks", McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook write that homogeneous personal networks result in limited "social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience".[12] This homophily can foster divides and echo chambers on social networking sites, where people of similar ideologies only interact with each other.

Causes

Geography: Baseline homophily often arises when the people who are located nearby also have similar characteristics. People are more likely to have contact with those who are geographically closer than those who are distant. Technology such as the telephone, e-mail, and social networks have reduced but not eliminated this effect.

Family ties: Family relationships often produce relatively close, frequent contact among those who are at great geographic distance. These ties tend to decay slowly, but can be dramatically restructured when new marriages occur.

Organizations: School, work, and volunteer activities provide the great majority of non-family ties. Many friendships, confiding relations, and social support ties are formed within voluntary groups. The social homogeneity of most organizations creates a strong baseline homophily in networks that are formed there.

Isomorphic sources: The connections between people who occupy equivalent roles will induce homophily in the system of network ties. This is common in three domains: workplace (for example all heads of HR departments will tend to associate with other HR heads), family (for example mothers tend to associate with other mothers), and informal networks.

Cognitive processes: People who have demographic similarity tend to own shared knowledge, and therefore they have a greater ease of communication and share cultural tastes, which can also generate homophily.

Effects

One study reported that perception of interpersonal similarity improves coordination and increase the expected payoff of interactions, above and beyond the effect of merely "liking others".[13] Another study claimed that homophily produces tolerance and cooperation in social spaces.[5] However, homophilic patterns can also restrict access to information or inclusion for minorities.[14]

Homophily's effects on the diffusion of information and behaviors are also complex. Some studies have claimed that homophily facilitates access information,[15] the diffusion of innovations and behaviors,[16] and the formation of social norms.[17] Other studies highlight mechanisms through which homophily can maintain disagreement, exacerbate polarization of opinions, and slow the formation of an overall consensus.[6][18]

Homophily is a cause of homogamy—marriage between people with similar characteristics.[19] Homophily is a fertility factor; An increased fertility is seen in people with a tendency to seek acquaintance among those with common characteristics.[20] Governmental family policies have a decreased influence on fertility rates in such populations.[20]

See also

References
  1. Ferguson, Niall (August 15, 2017). "The False Prophecy of Hyperconnection". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved October 1, 2017. At the same time, birds of a feather flock together. Because of the phenomenon known as “homophily”, or attraction to similarity, social networks tend to form clusters of nodes with similar properties or attitudes.
  2. McPherson, M.; Smith-Lovin, L.; Cook, J. M. (2001). "Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks". Annual Review of Sociology. 27: 415–444. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415.
  3. Retica, Aaron (10 December 2006). "Homophily". New York Times.
  4. Jiang, Yuexin; Bolnick, Daniel I.; Kirkpatrick, Mark (June 2013). "Assortative Mating in Animals". The American Naturalist. 181 (6): E125–38. doi:10.1086/670160. hdl:2152/31270. JSTOR 10.1086/670160. PMID 23669548.
  5. Mark, N. P. (2003). "Culture and competition: Homophily and distancing explanations for cultural niches". American Sociological Review. 68 (3): 319–345. doi:10.2307/1519727. JSTOR 1519727.
  6. Golub and Jackson (2012z). "How homophily affects the speed of learning and best-response dynamics" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Economics. 127(3): 1287–1338.
  7. Lazarsfeld, P. F. and Merton, R. K. RONKEYLAF (1954). "Friendship as a Social Process: A Substantive and Methodological Analysis". In Freedom and Control in Modern Society, Morroe Berger, Theodore Abel, and Charles H. Page, eds. New York: Van Nostrand, 18–66.
  8. Moody, James (November 2001). "Race, School Integration, and Friendship Segregation in America". American Journal of Sociology. 107 (3): 679–716. doi:10.1086/338954. ISSN 0002-9602.
  9. Shrum, Wesley; Cheek, Neil H.; Hunter, Saundra MacD. (October 1988). "Friendship in School: Gender and Racial Homophily". Sociology of Education. 61 (4): 227. doi:10.2307/2112441. ISSN 0038-0407. JSTOR 2112441.
  10. Marsden PV. 1988. Homogeneity in confiding relations. Soc. Networks 10:57–76
  11. Aiello, Luca Maria; Barrat, Alain; Schifanella, Rossano; Cattuto, Ciro; Markines, Benjamin; Menczer, Filippo (2012-05-01). "Friendship prediction and homophily in social media". ACM Transactions on the Web. 6 (2): 1–33. doi:10.1145/2180861.2180866. ISSN 1559-1131.
  12. McPherson, Miller; Smith-Lovin, Lynn; Cook, James M. (2003-11-28). "Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks". Annual Review of Sociology. 27 (1): 415–444. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415.
  13. Chierchia, Gabriele; Coricelli, Giorgio (2015). "The impact of perceived similarity on tacit coordination: propensity for matching and aversion to decoupling choices". Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 9: 202. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00202. PMC 4516978. PMID 26283940.
  14. Karimi, Fariba; Génois, Mathieu; Wagner, Claudia; Singer, Philipp; Strohmaier, Markus (2018-07-23). "Homophily influences ranking of minorities in social networks". Scientific Reports. 8 (1): 11077. Bibcode:2018NatSR...811077K. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-29405-7. ISSN 2045-2322. PMID 30038426.
  15. Choudhury, M. D (2010). ""Birds of a feather": Does user homophily impact information diffusion in social media". arXiv:1006.1702 [cs.CY].
  16. Christakis, N. A; Fowler, J. H. (2007). "The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years" (PDF). The New England Journal of Medicine. 357 (4): 370–379. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.581.4893. doi:10.1056/nejmsa066082. PMID 17652652.
  17. Centola, D; R, Willer; M, Macy (2005). "The emperor's dilemma: A computational model of self-enforcing norms". American Journal of Sociology. 110 (4): 1009–1040. doi:10.1086/427321. JSTOR 10.1086/427321.
  18. Centola D, Gonzalez-Avella JC, Eguiluz VM, San Miguel M. (2007). "Homophily, cultural drift, and the co-evolution of cultural groups". Journal of Conflict Resolution. 51(6): 905–29.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. Fiore, A. T. and Donath, J. S. (2005). "Homophily in Online Dating: When Do You Like Someone Like Yourself?". MIT Media Lab.
  20. Thomas Fent; Belinda Aparicio Diaz; Alexia Prskawetz (2013). "Family policies in the context of low fertility and social structure". Demographic Research. 29 (37).
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