Factors influencing the choice of friends : analysis of bulgarian friendship networks = Factores que influyen en la elección de amigos : análisis de redes de amistad búlgara

Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación que tiene lugar en 2006 usando un análisis sobre la red de amigos. Se estudian las relaciones de 223 pares de amigos. Había reciprocidad en las nociones de los que respondieron sobre el hecho de cómo percibían a sus amigos y cómo estos les percibían a ellos —como hombres o mujeres, como jóvenes, como habitantes de una ciudad, como vecinos, familiares, a través de características personales dominantes, como extranjeros, como europeos. Usualmente los amigos tenían la misma ocupación y el mismo estatus social. La identidad étnica, territorial Europea y de género influenciaban la elección de amigos y el desarrollo de la amistad. Los miembros de la mayoría étnica en Bulgaria mantenían amigos principalmente con los miembros del grupo étnico y con gente que declaró la misma religión, mientras que la gente de minorías étnicas mantuvo más frecuentemente amigos con miembros de los grupos étnicos externos y con gente de diferentes religiones. La identidad europea unificó a los miembros a encontrar cosas más comunes entre ellos cuando tenían diferentes identidades étnicas. La identidad territorial y la identidad de género dominaban más en las amistades de la gente joven que de los mayores.________________________________This paper presents the results from a research carried out in 2006 in Bulgaria by using the analysis of friendship network. The studied relationships were between 223 couples of friends. There was reciprocity in the respondents' notions about the fact how they perceived their friends and how their friends perceived them — as men/women, as young people, as inhabitants of a city, as neighbours, as relatives, through dominant personal qualities, as foreigners, as Europeans. Usually the friends had the same occupation and the same social status. The ethnic, territorial, European and gender identity influenced the choice of friends and the development of the friendship. The members of the ethnic majority in Bulgaria maintained friendships mainly with the members of the ethnic in-group and with people

Reasons for facebook usage: Data from 46 countries

Seventy-nine percent of internet users use Facebook, and on average they access Facebook eight times a day (Greenwood et al., 2016). To put these numbers into perspective, according to Clement (2019), around 30% of the world\u2019s population uses this Online Social Network (OSN) site. Despite the constantly growing body of academic research on Facebook (Chou et al., 2009; Back et al., 2010; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; McAndrew and Jeong, 2012; Wilson et al., 2012; Krasnova et al., 2017), there remains limited research regarding the motivation behind Facebook use across different cultures. Our main goal was to collect data from a large cross-cultural sample of Facebook users to examine the roles of sex, age, and, most importantly, cultural differences underlying Facebook use

Sex differences in mate preferences across 45 countries: A large-scale replication

Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives—an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective—offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the literature is fraught with conflicting methods, analyses, results, and conclusions. Using a new 45-country sample (N = 14,399), we attempted to replicate classic studies and test both the evolutionary and biosocial role perspectives. Support for universal sex differences in preferences remains robust: Men, more than women, prefer attractive, young mates, and women, more than men, prefer older mates with financial prospects. Cross-culturally, both sexes have mates closer to their own ages as gender equality increases. Beyond age of partner, neither pathogen prevalence nor gender equality robustly predicted sex differences or preferences across countries

Sentimentality and Nostalgia in Elderly People in Bulgaria and Greece – Cross-Validity of the Questionnaire SNEP and Cross-Cultural Comparison

Sentimentality and nostalgia are two similar psychological constructs, which play an important role in the emotional lives of elderly people who are usually focused on the past. There are two objectives of this study - making cross-cultural comparison of sentimentality and nostalgia among Bulgarian and Greek elderly people using a questionnaire, and establishing the psychometric properties of this questionnaire among Greek elderly people. Sentimentality and nostalgia in elderly people in Bulgaria and Greece were studied by means of Sentimentality and Nostalgia in Elderly People questionnaire (SNEP), created by Gergov and Stoyanova (2013). For the Greek version, one factor structure without sub-scales is proposed, while for the Bulgarian version of SNEP the factor structure had four sub-scales, besides the total score. Together with some similarities (medium level of nostalgia and sentimentality being widespread), the elderly people in Bulgaria and Greece differed cross-culturally in their sentimentality and nostalgia related to the past in direction of more increased sentimentality and nostalgia in the Bulgarian sample. Some gender and age differences revealed that the oldest male Bulgarians were the most sentimental. The psychometric properties of this questionnaire were examined for the first time in a Greek sample of elders and a trend was found for stability of sentimentality and nostalgia in elderly people that could be studied further in longitudinal studies

Contrasting Computational Models of Mate Preference Integration Across 45 Countries.

Humans express a wide array of ideal mate preferences. Around the world, people desire romantic partners who are intelligent, healthy, kind, physically attractive, wealthy, and more. In order for these ideal preferences to guide the choice of actual romantic partners, human mating psychology must possess a means to integrate information across these many preference dimensions into summaries of the overall mate value of their potential mates. Here we explore the computational design of this mate preference integration process using a large sample of n = 14,487 people from 45 countries around the world. We combine this large cross-cultural sample with agent-based models to compare eight hypothesized models of human mating markets. Across cultures, people higher in mate value appear to experience greater power of choice on the mating market in that they set higher ideal standards, better fulfill their preferences in choice, and pair with higher mate value partners. Furthermore, we find that this cross-culturally universal pattern of mate choice is most consistent with a Euclidean model of mate preference integration

Assortative mating and the evolution of desirability covariation

Mate choice lies dose to differential reproduction, the engine of evolution. Patterns of mate choice consequently have power to direct the course of evolution. Here we provide evidence suggesting one pattern of human mate choice-the tendency for mates to be similar in overall desirability-caused the evolution of a structure of correlations that we call the d factor. We use agent-based models to demonstrate that assortative mating causes the evolution of a positive manifold of desirability, d, such that an individual who is desirable as a mate along any one dimension tends to be desirable across all other dimensions. Further, we use a large cross-cultural sample with n = 14,478 from 45 countries around the world to show that this d-factor emerges in human samples, is a cross-cultural universal, and is patterned in a way consistent with an evolutionary history of assortative mating. Our results suggest that assortative mating can explain the evolution of a broad structure of human trait covariation