Homophily Theory

This link discusses the theory of homophily. This theory states that “most human communication will occur between a source and a receiver who are alike.” In layman’s terms it is the theory of why birds of a feather flock together. The article describes why this is: namely that communication flows more freely when the two people communicating are similar and we are more comfortable communicating with people who understand us better. The effort exerted when communicating with somebody who is not similar is much greater because it takes time and effort to have a mutual understanding and effective communication.

Homophily could probably be best studied in high school cafeterias by seeing who sits at what lunch table and what these people have in common. To connect the theory of homophily to what we have discussed in class isn’t cut and dry. In class we haven’t focused on social networks and homophily is all to do with this kind of network. Recently we have been discussing a network game that deals with splitting up a dollar and the power exerted by some members of the network. We can assume that the members of this network are pretty homophilous because of the ease in which they communicate. To split up a dollar by talking on Instant Messaging software in a couple of minutes implies that these people are able to communicate efficiently which in turn implies that they share things in common. The most obvious trait these people share is language. If nodes “a” and “b” speak English but node “c” speaks Yiddish, chances are that “b” is going to choose “a” to split this dollar with.