A new study has investigated what criteria adolescents follow, generally without being aware of it, when establishing and maintaining friendships with some of their classmates and not with others.
Similarity is not the key, according to this research in which the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and Loyola University participate.
The research team, headed by Miguel Ruiz García from UC3M, has discovered that personality does not seem to influence much when choosing social friendship relationships at school, which are based more on the closeness of our contacts.
“This is pioneering work in the sense that it uses artificial intelligence techniques to predict whether there is a relationship between two people (good or bad). But beyond this prediction itself, the work provides an understanding of how we build our friendships, by identifying common relationships and not personal characteristics as the main reason for being connected,” indicates one of the authors of the study, Anxo Sánchez, professor of the Department of Mathematics of the UC3M and researcher of the Interdisciplinary Group of Complex Systems (GISC).
In this work, a detailed study on the social relationships of students at 13 secondary schools, including more than 3,000 students and around 60,000 reported positive and negative relationships, is presented, along with evidence of students’ personal traits. “We can predict with a fair amount of accuracy (90%) whether two people are friends or get along badly simply by knowing how many friends and enemies they have in common,” adds Anxo Sánchez.
“Our results suggest a nucleation mechanism of social relationships based on individual traits, followed by a growth and evolution of the friendship network dominated by a triadic influence (friends of friends of friends),” says another of the authors of the study, María Pereda, from the Department of Organization Engineering, Business Administration and Statistics of the UPM. “This suggests that not only do our close friendships have an effect on us, but even people we know indirectly can affect our behaviors and decisions. “This discovery has exciting implications for the way we understand social dynamics and the role we play in them,” he adds.
This work is important because it challenges the common belief that friendships are based on similarity – that is, homophily –, the researchers say. This understanding can have important implications for how we understand and construct our friendships, especially in societies where cultural and thought homogeneity may be highly valued.
“If people understand that they don’t need to be the same to be friends, they might be more willing to seek friendships with people who have different backgrounds, interests, and perspectives,” says María Pereda. “In addition, if homophily is not the only important thing when creating new relationships but rather that we can connect with other people simply because they are friends of our friends, then diversity will increase and, with it, polarization will decrease,” adds another. the authors of the study, Pablo Brañas, professor in the Department of Economics at Loyola University.
This research provides useful data and results for the management of classrooms, institutes and educational centers. “For example, it allows us to know when students may find themselves in a situation of risk of social exclusion, because they have few good relationships and many bad relationships,” says another of the authors of the study, José Antonio Cuesta, professor in the Department of Mathematics at the UC3M.
“We detect very well what the social climate of the classrooms is, it makes a complete picture of how people get along at the institute and what those relationships are like (which the teachers are sometimes unaware of), and thanks to this this issue could be reorganized to “try to improve the social climate.” In fact, UC3M collaborates in this line with a company from Zaragoza, Kampal, to produce software that helps institute counselors intervene in situations of vulnerability.
Fuente: NCYT