http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415?cookieSet=1

This paper published by sociologists McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook touches on a number of topics that have been discussed in class and, for me, brings the study of social networks around full circle. In their paper, these researchers discuss the existence of homophily in the following categories: race and ethnicity, age, religion, education, occupation, social status, and sex and gender. I’ve chosen to focus on the latter, sex and gender, seeing that it provides the most all-encompassing example social networks that have been discussed in class.

First, I’d like to give a brief definition of homophily according to the authors. “Homophily is the principle that a contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people.” Furthermore, the existence of homophily entails that any “social entity that depends to a substantial degree on networks for its transmission will tend to be localized in social space and will obey certain fundamental dynamics as it interacts with other social entities in an ecology of social forms.” In short, the notion of homophily explains why we seek companionship of those like us and also why we prefer the company of those who are similar. That being said, I’d like to discuss its application to sex and gender.

In the paper, the researchers discuss previous findings concerning studies of gender in young children’s social networks. The most interesting information I found was the fact that triadic closure was more likely to exist between boys but not girls, an issue we never considered in class. It was actually found that “girls are more likely to resolve intransitivity by deleting friendship choices, while boys are more likely to add them. For example, if A likes B and B likes C, a young boy would be more likely to add an A–C relation to resolve the intransitivity, while a young girl would be more likely to drop B as a friend.” This fundamental principle when applied later on in life, can actually explain a lot of the social activities that differ between males and females. For instance, this explains why boys form larger, more heterogeneous cliques while girls form smaller, more homogeneous groups. “This tendency is especially marked in the early grades and abates as adolescents move into the romantic ties of puberty.”

While reading this paper, I had several “aha” experiences. There were a number of issues and relationships that were typified in the paper that, only after reading about them, are seemingly obvious. It strikes me as odd yet intriguing that so many relationships can be explained so easily using homophily… I always thought our social ties were much more complicated.