{"id":126652,"date":"2019-04-03T11:02:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T19:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=126652"},"modified":"2019-04-03T11:02:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T19:02:50","slug":"the-human-network-how-your-social-position-determines-your-power-beliefs-and-behaviors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=126652","title":{"rendered":"The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The book on Amazon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oren Cass writes in the WSJ<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ever have the sneaking suspicion that your friends are more popular than you? Turns out it\u2019s probably true\u2014and not just because you may be insufferable at cocktail parties. Why it\u2019s true is fairly complicated, but in his book \u201cThe Human Network\u201d Stanford economist Matthew O. Jackson entertainingly analyzes this and other mysteries. Drawing on the academic discipline known as network theory, Mr. Jackson aims to introduce and popularize a powerful way of understanding some of modern society\u2019s central challenges.<\/p>\n

Start with the \u201cfriendship paradox\u201d: Imagine drawing a network of everyone from your high school\u2014a circle representing each person and a line between circles representing a friendship. First, assign each circle a \u201cpopularity score\u201d equal to the number of other circles connected to it (i.e., that person\u2019s number of friends). Then, for each circle, calculate the average of the popularity scores of the circles connected to it; now each circle has a \u201cpopularity score\u201d and a \u201cpopularity-of-friends score.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the paradox: A typical person will have a \u201cpopularity-of-friends\u201d score higher than his or her own \u201cpopularity score.\u201d Most people\u2019s friends really are more popular than they are. Precisely because the most popular people have more friends, they show up on the most lists of others\u2019 friends. Thus insecure high-school students comparing their popularity to those in their social circle are not looking at a random sample, but one that overweights the most popular kids in school.<\/p>\n

This effect of networks overrepresenting the already-popular helps explain a lot of adolescent behavior. More socially active teenagers tend toward more extreme behaviors, leaving everyone else with a mistaken impression about those behaviors\u2019 frequency. College students overestimate how much a typical student drinks because the average level of drinking in an individual\u2019s own network likely exceeds the actual average…<\/p>\n

The fun and games end with the introduction of \u201chomophily,\u201d which the author defines as \u201cthe general tendency of people to interact with others who are similar to themselves.\u201d Importantly, he emphasizes, the phenomenon is common to almost all societies and \u201coccurs along many dimensions including gender, ethnicity, religion, age, profession, [and] education level.\u201d Racism and sexism are unnecessary to explain even highly segregated networks\u2014in Africa\u2019s Great Rift Valley, nomadic hunter-gatherers exhibit homophily on dimensions that include height, weight and strength.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The book on Amazon.com. Oren Cass writes in the WSJ: Ever have the sneaking suspicion that your friends are more popular than you? Turns out it\u2019s probably true\u2014and not just because you may be insufferable at cocktail parties. Why it\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[592],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126654,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126652\/revisions\/126654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}