I found the Granovetter article on “The Strength of Weak Ties” to be very interesting. However, I took issue with some of the assertions that he made. While I agree with his statement that it makes more sense to differentiate between strong and weak ties on an intuitive basis (rather than calculating it based on time spent together, etc.), I disagree with some of the assumptions that he made about strong ties. For example, he stated that “the stronger the tie connecting two individuals, the more similar they are, in various ways,” (1362). While this may be intuitively correct, I don’t agree that this is always the case. For example, I have friends who I have known since kindergarten. I would definitely consider them to be strong ties, but I would not say that we are similar. Our ties are strong because we have been friends for so long, not necessarily because we have similar personalities that draw us towards one another. Still, I find his argument that weak ties are often more beneficial than strong ties to be very compelling. I definitely know of many situations, like the ones he describes, where people have gotten jobs or made close friends through weak ties, rather than strong ties. At another point in the article though, he asserts that he will use how frequently one sees an acquaintance to judge the strength of their tie. I strongly disagree with this method. I think that there are numerous circumstances under which one might not see a very close friend for a while (college being just one such situation), but this does not decrease the strength of that tie.
Question: How do you think that the college environment correlates with Granovetter’s findings (and those of the other authors as well)? Do you think that tie strength can be measured in the same way with college students as it can be with the rest of the population?
I also really liked the questions that Grannovetter posed at the end of his article, such as “how can negative ties be handled?” I thought that these were valid questions that it would be very interesting to find answers for.
In “The Social Structure of Competition” Burt discusses social capital. He discusses the differences between efficiency and effectiveness within a social network. Essentially, his point is the same as Granovetter’s: that it is more advantageous to have a network made up of more weak ties. Burt states that it is more strategically beneficial to have fewer redundant contacts (and it is therefore better to have more structural holes). He makes the argument that it doesn’t matter as much how many ties you have, but what really matters is how many of these ties bridge structural holes. I found this point to be very interesting and very valid. While having many ties is good, it does not help you much if they all connect back to one another within the same clique.
I found McPherson et al’s study in “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades” to be really interesting. These authors studied the changes in the number of people we feel that we can discuss “important things” with. I found some of their results startling - particularly, the result that since 1985 the number of subjects who say that they have no confidant has increase from 10% to 24.6%. Many of the other results were interesting, but I found this one to stand out the most. As I was reading this article, I kept thinking what different things could have caused such drastic changes. Early in the article, the authors mention that “important topics” might mean something different to everyone. I agree that within one study this does not matter much because they are simply trying to find out how many people each subject feels he or she can talk to about the topics that are important to them. However, differences in the importance of topics over time could definitely account for some of the changes. I was very happy to see that the authors mentioned this possibility when they discussed potential explanations for their results. They also explained that this survey was relatively long (often taking over an hour). I think that since 1985 our society has become increasingly more impatient because of television, internet use and cell phones. Therefore it is also possible that subjects were in more of a hurry to leave in 2004 than in 1985 and thus answered accordingly.
Question: Other than the possibilities offered by the authors, what other things do you think could have been responsible for these results?
Comments (4)
I believe that general American distrust of others outside of the family unit accounts for this increased social isolation and the drop off of non-kin ties in particular. According to an article by Robert Putnam entitled "Social Capital Measurements and Consequences," he actually charts the percentage of Americans who believe that "most people can be trusted". The percentage has dropped from 55% in 1960 to 25% as of 2000. Charitable giving has also decreased. These are just reflections of a sentiment that seems to be catching steam, "Don't trust those outside of the familial circle," and in minority populations there is even a marked disparity in kinship ties.
Posted by Charli-g44 | September 26, 2006 9:00 AM
Posted on September 26, 2006 09:00
In regards to your first question about the college environment's effect on social networks and ties, I think that the characteristics of college environment's people differ form traditional American life. Most colleges strive towards diversity of subcultures, have students captive geographically, and expose students to a high number of people through dorm residences, classes, and concerted efforts like orientation barbeques. Also, most students are young and not fettered down by economic constraints like mortgages, thus freeing up more psychic energy on efforts to spend time with new people. So I definitely think the college environment engenders a different type of social network process and patterns than for other people. I do wonder though, how and do these ties and social networking behavior change after college?
As for your last question, the authors do mention some demographic considerations that could have affected the results. I agree that the aging of the general population would have contributed to people having less confidants. As people progress into their career, geographic, and nuclear family niche, I think that there are less opportunities especially when compared to college to meet and establish these new confidants. Although this would not have directly contributed to the changes from 1985, I think that the suburbanization of America we discussed in our second class could have contributed to these changes.
Posted by Liz Day | September 26, 2006 5:15 PM
Posted on September 26, 2006 17:15
g18 makes an excellent comment that the 2004 subjects compared with the 1985 in this study probably had become too impatient with the study since it did take around an hour to complete. The researchers should have focused on a way to make the subjects feel as though they should stay and give their entire effort into this study, perhaps a warning at the beginning that the subjects cannot leave the study before x number of minutes, to ensure that they cannot just hurry their response. Or the researchers could simply offer a higher monetary compensation for staying the full time. I understand that the researchers did measure the emotional levels of the subjects while in the study. So that those who were bored with the study may answer differently. I think they should just follow a different way of coding, in which one looks at the response after periods of time and have several repeat questions - if the subject is responding on a whim and the responses vary, then the results should be questioned. But, if the researchers feel they need to alter the study in this matter, they should shorten the study all together, eliminating unnecessary questions, or variables. The results of the study may drastically change, now that the subjects are more engaged.
Posted by g3 | September 28, 2006 1:33 AM
Posted on September 28, 2006 01:33
Though you and your friends may not characteristically be the same, do you come from similar backgrounds? Just something to consider. Anyways I thought you asked some interesting questions. First off I feel that Granovetters findings to have a lot of relevance in the college setting, but as with all the articles we’ve read so far, it is aimed at society as a whole and therefore has some holes. Mainly I thought the triangle theory was least relevant. In the double lives we lead (School vs. Home) often our strongest ties do not interact and often only know of one another from the middle man.
I liked your point on the attention deficit world in which we live. It is very true that American’s attention spans are diminishing thanks in part to media, and just a fast paced world. Some other possible explanations for McPherson et al’s findings could be the global factor. People are spreading themselves thinner in more places and have to work harder at maintaining strong ties, therefore they have fewer of them. It would have been nice to have some studies done intermittently between 1985-2004 to see if there was any major jumps and events wherein causing this effect, but more than likely it was a gradual decline in confidants caused by new communication techniques and the mindset of not “washing dirty laundry in public”.
Posted by R14 | September 28, 2006 2:08 AM
Posted on September 28, 2006 02:08