but do all birds fly south?
McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Mcook’s article, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” showed the similarity between people and how we tend to be a magnet for people like us. They found that people of similar gender, age, race and education level tend to interact more often than those with different backgrounds. This coincides with many of our previous studies, and I think complements Korte’s study of delivering notebooks to people of different races. He found it was more likely that the binders would reach targets if the bridge between the races was an acquitance rather than a “friend”. If McPherson is correct in saying that homophily limits our social world, than it is important to hold on to our weak ties as Burt would say, in order to increase our intake of outside knowledge and not limit our social networks.
Pearson, M., Steglich, C., & Snijders, T. article “Homophily and assimilation among sport-active adolescent substance users,” is one of the most interesting articles we have read so far. Though the subjects may seem young, (starting at 13 and ending at 15) I believe this is a very impressionable age for young adult. Where I come from, this is an age at which most of friends either did, or seriously considered experimenting with substances. At this age however, I think that assimilation is far more important than homophily because we tend to want to fit in with our friends and will do what they do. One thing that would have been interesting to look at is whether or not parental influence was stronger than peer. How many of these subjects were children of parents with substance abuse? Would this have had an effect on the results? And of course since this study takes place in Scotland it is difficult to generalize to an American culture, especially if (like me) you are not familiar with the Scotland ways of thinking. However I know in America such studies have been done to show that increased athletic involvement is correlated with decreased substance use, or atleast that’s what the commercials say.
The Hill and Dunbar article, “Social Network Size in Humans,” is a nice thought, but it really has little scientific value. First of all, who were the people the cards were being sent to? Yes it said that they were sent to people that our subjects felt obligated to “make (at least annual) contact with all those individuals whose relationships are considered important” but what kinds of ties are these? There should have been some information on a Wellman like scale, that describes what role the people the cards were sent to play in your social network. IF it is someone you feel obligated to, that can often mean someone in a higher status who you work for (as a means of “sucking up”) or someone that you want to show gratitude to, say your barista. These are people who play very different roles in our lives, and would have added a lot to this study. If done on a Wellman scale we could analyze between financial and companionship based relationships, which may largely affect the results. And for obvious reasons, not only do other religions and people on a tighter budget not send Christmas cards, but not all people who celebrate Christmas send Christmas cards. So though it was a “nice” idea for a paper, I believe the findings are far from being able to generalize to any society.
The Killworth, et al. study, “Estimating the Size of Personal Networks” also falls into the category of good internal validity, not so good external validity. Though I believe it is a stronger study than Hill and Dunbar’s, it excludes a lot of people. It was done during 1990, however many people (more than we may think) were either unlisted or did not have telephones. Nowadays we have the problem with cellphones, but back then this was not as great of an issue. Also personally, I am horrible with names, and would therefore automatically bias the study. Though I may know 100 people, I would only recognize 80 names, does this mean that I am not as close with some or they wouldn’t be considered part of my network? Some people have very distinct names. As far as how big our social networks are, hasn’t Lois Weisberg taught us that they are almost limitless? One point I found very interesting was that Mexico City had the smallest networks on average than the other cities tested (Orange County and Jacksonville). This would reiterate last weeks and this weeks readings that education (typically lower in Mexico City) would have a large effect on our networks because of our homophilious tendencies.