Social networks are more demographically diverse than in the past, but the tendency for the alike to associate remains a strong force in society

In recent decades, the U.S. has undergone significant social and demographic change, and has become much more racially and religiously heterogeneous. But have these changes been reflected in who people now associate with for friendship and other relationships? In new research, which measures changes in ‘homophily’, or the tendency for people who are similar to be more likely to know each other, Jeffrey A. Smith, Miller McPherson and Lynn Smith-Lovin find thatmore people now know someone with a different racial/religious background, and that these changes have occurred in line with demographic shifts. They also find that homophily is decreasing along gender lines as men and women occupy increasingly similar roles in society, and that there is less interaction between people in different age groups

Social Distance in the United States: Sex, Race, Religion, Age, and Education Homophily among Confidants, 1985 to 2004

Homophily, the tendency for similar actors to be connected at a higher rate than dissimilar actors, is a pervasive social fact. In this article, we examine changes over a 20-year period in two types of homophily—the actual level of contact between people in different social categories and the level of contact relative to chance. We use data from the 1985 and 2004 General Social Surveys to ask whether the strengths of five social distinctions—sex, race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, age, and education—changed over the past two decades in core discussion networks. Changes in the actual level of homophily are driven by the demographic composition of the United States. As the nation has become more diverse, cross-category contacts in race/ethnicity and religion have increased. After describing the raw homophily rates, we develop a case-control model to assess homophily relative to chance mixing. We find decreasing rates of homophily for gender but stability for race and age, although the young are increasingly isolated from older cohorts outside of the family. We also find some weak evidence for increasing educational and religious homophily. These relational trends may be explained by changes in demographic heterogeneity, institutional segregation, economic inequality, and symbolic boundaries

Social isolation in America: Changes in core discussion networks over two decades

Have the core discussion networks of Americans changed in the past two decades? In 1985, the General Social Survey (GSS) collected the first nationally representative data on the confidants with whom Americans discuss important matters. In the 2004 GSS the authors replicated those questions to assess social change in core network structures. Discussion networks are smaller in 2004 than in 1985. The number of people saying there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled. The mean network size decreases by about a third (one confidant), from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. The modal respondent now reports having no confidant; the modal respondent in 1985 had three confidants. Both kin and non-kin confidants were lost in the past two decades, but the greater decrease of non-kin ties leads to more confidant networks centered on spouses and parents, with fewer contacts through voluntary associations and neighborhoods. Most people have densely interconnected confidants similar to them. Some changes reflect the changing demographics of the U.S. population. Educational heterogeneity of social ties has decreased, racial heterogeneity has increased. The data may overestimate the number of social isolates, but these shrinking networks reflect an important social change in America There are some things that we discuss only with people who are very close to us. These important topics may vary with the situation or the person—we may ask for help, probe for information, or just use the person as a sounding board for important decisions—but these are the people who make up our core network of confidants. How have these discussion networks of close confidants changed over the past two Please address correspondence to Mille

Justice Standard Determines Emotional Responses to Over-Reward

How do people feel when they benefit from an unfair reward distribution? Equity theory predicts negative emotion in response to over-reward, but sociological research using referential standards of justice drawn from status-value theory repeatedly finds positive emotional responses to over-reward. Researchers have proposed methodological explanations for these different findings, but we propose a theoretical explanation—that over-reward based on local comparisons with an interaction partner creates guilt and other negative emotions, while over-reward relative to an abstract justice standard leads to more positive emotion. We describe two experiments that address methodological explanations for the status value findings: (1) lack of tangible rewards and (2) lack of sufficiently large over-rewards. We find that people who are over-rewarded relative to their referential expectations still report less negative emotion and more positive emotion than those who receive expected rewards. We report results from a third experiment that demonstrate support for our theoretical argument