Homophily on the rise
In case you don’t know what that all means, here’s a Washington Post article reprinted on SFGate.com that’s bound to enlighten you:
You can see it the next time you visit your office cafeteria or a nearby park: whites sitting together with whites, blacks with blacks, young people with other young people. When individuals from these groups mix, it is usually because they share something else in common, such as a pastime.
Sociologists call this phenomenon homophily, a somewhat grand word to describe the idea that birds of a feather flock together.
The article focuses mainly on political homophily, and asks (not that this is a new question) whether cable television and the Internet are making it easier for us to self-sort by political viewpoint. It also poses some intriguing questions, like this one:
But while people may choose blogs or op-ed columnists because they agree with those points of view, do they really choose friends the same way? When was the last time you met someone at a social gathering and quickly asked him his views on abortion, gay marriage and the war in Iraq before deciding to be friends? That does not happen, of course, so one of the most interesting puzzles about homophily is how it turns out that friends often end up having the same views on those subjects.
Perhaps, as the article suggests, the answer is that other choices we make tend to throw us together with people with similar political beliefs. Or put another way: political beliefs correlate to other factors, such as lifestyle, income, leisure activities, etc. I’m not likely to meet a hard core Republican by joining a Saturday morning drumming circle at Cobb’s Hill Reservoir. Or a Hillary groupie at a shooting range.
But there’s another piece, too, which has to do with comfort and discomfort, with how we narrate our lives and then validate that narration. Perhaps less measurable but I wonder if it’s the story behind the story, here.
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