Herding Friends in Similarity-Based Architecture of Social Networks.

ABSTRACT: Although friendship as a social behaviour is an evolved trait that shares many similarities with kinship, there is a key difference: to choose friends, one must select few from many. Homophily, i.e., a similarity-based friendship choice heuristic, has been shown to be the main factor in selecting friends. Its function has been associated with the efficiency of collective action via synchronised mental states. Recent empirical results question the general validity of this explanation. Here I offer an alternative hypothesis: similarity-based friendship choice is an individual-level adaptive response to falling clustering coefficient of the social network typical during urbanisation, falling fertility, increased migration. The mathematical model shows how homophily as a friend-choice heuristi

SUBMITTER: David-Barrett T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7078182 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature