Formation of homophily in academic performance: Students change their friends rather than performance.

ABSTRACT: Homophily, the tendency of individuals to associate with others who share similar traits, has been identified as a major driving force in the formation and evolution of social ties. In many cases, it is not clear if homophily is the result of a socialization process, where individuals change their traits according to the dominance of that trait in their local social networks, or if it results from a selection process, in which individuals reshape their social networks so that their traits match those in the new environment. Here we demonstrate the detailed temporal formation of strong homophily in academic achievements of high school and university students. We analyze a unique dataset that contains information about the detailed time evolution of a friendship network of 6,000 students acr

SUBMITTER: Smirnov I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5576666 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature