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Heterophily in social groups formation: a social network analysis

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Abstract

Research on heterophily as a relational phenomenon is mostly limited to specific professional contexts which do not include knowledge about status or value heterophily as a possible group-generating principle. This article tries to close this gap by proposing and applying a new method of data analysis to investigate this possible role of heterophily. We apply social network analysis to personal network data. As a preliminary, we introduce a conceptual distinction between two types of heterophily, what we call intra-category heterophily and inter-category heterophily, and we validate the adjusted residuals of contingency tables to measure these two types of heterophily. Then, we reconstruct the relational space of these heterophilous relations among categories or attributes defined by socio-demographic and status characteristics. Finally, we group by faction algorithm the categories or attributes that maintain denser heterophilous relationships with each other than with the rest. The methodology proves to be valid and useful for achieving the desired analytical objective, revealing that status-heterophilous relationships can be considered as guiding principles, or mechanisms, for generating groups of social categories.

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Notes

  1. In the field of social psychology, Wittenbaum and Moreland (2008) provide a comprehensive review of small-groups studies, Forsyth (2010) provides a textbook of reference, and the special issue of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice, 2000, vol. 4 offers a collection of articles on traditional main topics. In the fields of Sociology and Anthropology there are no equivalent texts or compilations, but Freeman (1992) and Frank (1995) can be cited as important references.

  2. See Weber’s understanding of status in Crompton (1994 [1993]: 51–53, 165–166).

  3. For comprehensive reviews of studies on homophily, see McPherson et al. (2001) and Rivera et al. (2010, pp. 94–96); for those on heterophily in network dyads, see Rivera et al. (2010, pp. 96–97).

  4. Research on tie formation in the banking system has also found that their relations are affected by and reproduce patterns of status (e.g. Poldony 1993, Massó and Arnulfo Ruiz-León 2017).

  5. 2011 figures of the Statistical Institute of Catalonia (Idescat).

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Acknowledgements

This article is part of the conceptual and methodological work for the research project ‘Social Networks as Resources and Search Mechanisms for Employment and Social Support in Youth’, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant CSO2012-36055. However, the data used in the article comes from the research project ‘Compared case study on the mutual influence between social capital, social integration and the insertion, stability, promotion and qualification in the employment’, funded by the Ministry of Education and Science under grant CSO2008-01470. We also wish to thank Joan-Miquel Verd for comments on an early version of the article.

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  1. Centre d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball (QUIT) – Institut d’Estudis del Treball (IET), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Oriol Barranco, Carlos Lozares & Dafne Muntanyola-Saura

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  1. Oriol Barranco
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Correspondence to Oriol Barranco.

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Barranco, O., Lozares, C. & Muntanyola-Saura, D. Heterophily in social groups formation: a social network analysis. Qual Quant 53, 599–619 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-018-0777-7

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