Related papers: Opportunity and choice in social networks

People are observed to assortatively connect on a set of traits. This phenomenon, termed assortative mixing or sometimes homophily, can be quantified through assortativity coefficient in social networks. Uncovering the exact causes of…

We introduce a model for the formation of social networks, which takes into account the homophily or the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, and the mechanisms of global and local attachment as well as tie…

Real-world social networks often exhibit high levels of clustering, positive degree assortativity, short average path lengths (small-world property) and right-skewed but rarely power law degree distributions. On the other hand homophily,…

We address the problem of using observational data to estimate peer contagion effects, the influence of treatments applied to individuals in a network on the outcomes of their neighbors. A main challenge to such estimation is that homophily…

Our consumption of online information is mediated by filtering, ranking, and recommendation algorithms that introduce unintentional biases as they attempt to deliver relevant and engaging content. It has been suggested that our reliance on…

It is well known that networks generated by common mechanisms such as preferential attachment and homophily can disadvantage the minority group by limiting their ability to establish links with the majority group. This has the effect of…

Many scientific collaboration networks exhibit clear community and small world structures. However, the studies on the underlying mechanisms for the formation and evolution of community and small world structures are still insufficient. The…

Though algorithms promise many benefits including efficiency, objectivity and accuracy, they may also introduce or amplify biases. Here we study two well-known algorithms, namely PageRank and Who-to-Follow (WTF), and show to what extent…

Homophily is the seemingly ubiquitous tendency for people to connect and interact with other individuals who are similar to them. This is a well-documented principle and is fundamental for how society organizes. Although many social…

One of the fundamental principles driving diversity or homogeneity in domains such as cultural differentiation, political affiliation, and product adoption is the tension between two forces: influence (the tendency of people to become…

I examine a random network model where nodes are categorized by type and linking probabilities can differ across types. I show that as homophily increases (so that the probability to link to other nodes of the same type increases and the…

Collaboration networks provide a method for examining the highly heterogeneous structure of collaborative communities. However, we still have limited theoretical understanding of how individual heterogeneity relates to network…

This paper investigates the role of homophily and focus constraint in shaping collaborative scientific research. First, homophily structures collaboration when scientists adhere to a norm of exclusivity in selecting similar partners at a…

More than any other species, humans form social ties to individuals who are neither kin nor mates, and these ties tend to be with similar people. Here, we show that this similarity extends to genotypes. Across the whole genome, friends'…

Social networks tend to disproportionally favor connections between individuals with either similar or dissimilar characteristics. This propensity, referred to as assortative mixing or homophily, is expressed as the correlation between…

Social networks affect the diffusion of information, and thus have the potential to reduce or amplify inequality in access to opportunity. We show empirically that social networks often exhibit a much larger potential for unequal diffusion…

We propose an equilibrium interaction model of occupational segregation and labor market inequality between two social groups, generated exclusively through the documented tendency to refer informal job seekers of identical "social color".…

Socio-diversity, the variety of human opinions, ideas, behaviors and styles, has profound implications for social systems. While it fuels innovation, productivity, and collective intelligence, it can also complicate communication and erode…

Social influence cannot be identified from purely observational data on social networks, because such influence is generically confounded with latent homophily, i.e., with a node's network partners being informative about the node's…

Social networks exhibit strikingly systematic patterns across a wide range of human contexts. While genetic variation accounts for a significant portion of the variation in many complex social behaviors, the heritability of egocentric…