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Communication in social networks: Effects of kinship, network size, and emotional closeness
Abstract
Communication is important in preventing social relationships from decaying over time. This study examined the effects of social network size, emotional closeness, and type of relationship (kinship vs. friendship) on communication patterns in the social networks of 251 women. Participants with large kin networks had longer times to last contact to both kin and friends. Participants with high levels of emotional closeness in their networks had shorter times to last contact. The effect of emotional closeness on time to last contact was greater for kin than for friends. These results demonstrate that time to last contact is closely tied to emotional closeness and suggest that the costs of maintaining kin relationships are lower than the costs of maintaining friendships.
... However, they face cognitive constraints (Dunbar RIM, 2012) (for example, memory and processing capacity) and time constraints (that is, time costs) in constructing and maintaining social relationships. These time costs are not negligible, as humans spend a fifth of their day in social grooming (Dunbar RIM, 1998) and maintaining social relationships (Hill RA and Dunbar RIM, 2003;Roberts SGB and Dunbar RIM, 2011). Therefore, the mean strength of existing social relationships has a negative correlation with the number of social relationships (Roberts SGB et al., 2009;Miritello G et al., 2013a). ...
... There is a trade-off between the number of social relationships (that is, N ) and the mean strength of social relationships (that is, m) (Roberts SGB et al., 2009;Miritello G et al., 2013a) as humans must perform frequent social grooming to maintain close relationships (Hill RA and Dunbar RIM, 2003;Roberts SGB and Dunbar RIM, 2011;Saramaki J et al., 2014). Here, we found a simple law where N was inversely proportional to m a (a > 1). ...
A single human can be involved in a limited number of social relationships, and the distribution of strengths of such relationships shows significant skew. This skewness suggests that the costs and benefits of the social interactions required to bond with others (social grooming) depend on the social relationship strength: if they involved uniform costs and benefits, the distribution would not be skew. Here, we show that the cost of social grooming increases with the social relationship strength, and its gradient determines the structures of these relationships in society as evident from an analysis of data from six communication systems. This may be due to an increase in communication volumes, such as number of characters and duration of calls, along with an increase in the social relationship strength. We tested this hypothesis using an individual-based simulation where social grooming costs were assumed to increase linearly with the social relationship strength; this is the simplest assumption. The results indicated that this model fitted all data sets, i.e., it showed an explanation capacity for the phenomenon. Additionally, an analysis of this simulation suggested that the gradient of social grooming costs increases the width and shallowness of social relationships in its communication system.
... (Roberts, Dunbar, 2011). Konstrukt bliskości można określić w wymiarze poznawczym, behawioralnym, fizycznym, emocjonalnym czy dotyczącym stanu lub cechy (Ben-Ari, Lavee, 2007, za: Zygar-Hoffmann, Cristoforo, Wolf, Schönbrodt, 2022Dibble, Levine, Park, 2012). ...
... Inną kwestią jest to, że bliskość jako konstrukt wyrażana jest na wielu płaszczyznach, takich jak poznawcza, fizyczna czy emocjonalna (Ben-Ari, Lavee, 2007, za: Zygar-Hoffmann i in., 2022Dibble i in., 2012). Jako cecha w relacji jest odczuwana w sposób subiektywny (Roberts, Dunbar, 2011). Kwestie wielowymiarowości oraz subiektywności bliskości mogą wyjaśniać, dlaczego samoakceptacja nie odgrywa tak ważnej roli, jak przypuszczano w hipotezie. ...
People with increased perfectionism have greater interpersonal difficulties. It can also be concluded that low self-acceptance may be associated with difficulties in relationships with others. The aim of the study was to investigate how self-acceptance explains closeness in interpersonal relationships and the level of positive relationships with others. It also focused on how closeness in relationships and the quality of relationships with others is explained by self-acceptance and some sub-dimensions of perfectionism. The sample consisted of 219 adults aged 18–64 (M = 32.63; SD = 12.96) who completed the Perfectionism Scale (BTPS), the Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS) and the Unidimensional Relationship Closeness Scale (URCS). The statistical methods included correlation and regression analyses. Self-acceptance explains the intensity of positive relationships with others as opposed to closeness in relationships. In terms of perfectionism, positive relationships with others were explained by self-acceptance, self-esteem conditioning and action doubt. The results are a prelude to further research on the relationship between perfectionism, self-acceptance and interpersonal relationships.
... The sizes of these circles appear to be remarkably stable across time, despite changes in membership 2 . This is largely a consequence of the fact that the time available for socialising (and hence the capacity for bond-building) is strictly limited [3][4][5] . The circles are created by differential time investment, with the five members of the innermost circle receiving around 40% of total social effort between them. ...
... Studies of these age groups have focused on tie quality in a handful of identified close family and friend relationships ('best friends' or, perhaps, the inner core of five best friends). There is some evidence that network size increases across childhood and the teenage years, and that it does so by adding whole layers in step-changes rather than by accreting alters individually 4 . ...
The personal network of relationships is structured in circles of friendships, that go from the most intense relationships to the least intense ones. While this is a well established result, little is known about the stability of those circles and their evolution in time. To shed light on this issue, we study the temporal evolution of friendships among teenagers during two consecutive academic years by means of a survey administered on five occasions. We show that the first two circles, best friends and friends, can be clearly observed in the survey but also that being in one or the other leads to more or less stable relationships. We find that being in the same class is one of the key drivers of friendship evolution. We also observe an almost constant degree of reciprocity in the relationships, around 60%, a percentage influenced both by being in the same class and by gender homophily. Not only do our results confirm the mounting evidence supporting the circle structure of human social networks, but they also show that these structures persist in time despite the turnover of individual relationships—a fact that may prove particularly useful for understanding the social environment in middle schools.
... Moreover, profoundly the use of social media affects young people socially, emotionally, physically, and psychologically as well as during crucial periods of cognitive development. Youth are often utilizing these online platforms to quickly gain popularity, fame, and status by posting information, funny videos, or other related thing on their profile, sending or receiving media, chatting, and sharing information with unknown users (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). Furthermore, numerous studies have investigated deviant behavior associated with using various social media sites, by finding indicating that a significant number of people, especially teens, and youth who are using these platforms may engage in activities such as cyberbullying, harassment, blackmailing, language abuse, gambling, depression, mental health issue, cyber deception, alcoholic abuse, and other crimes. ...
The current study was conducted on the impacts of social media usage on cyberbullying among youth in districts lower Dir Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. A sample size of 354 students was randomly selected for the collection of primary data by using structured questionnaires. The primary data was analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage distribution) and inferential statistics, specifically the chi-square test. The present study found that the proliferation of the use of smartphones and the rising level of the usage of social media has transformed the practice of bullying at micro and macro levels. Children, teens, and youth of poor families become the victims of bullying more than those who have high income to encounter such kind of online bullying. Furthermore, cyberbullying is the most popular online crime on social media. Likewise, the majority of cyberbullies send explicit images to users they did not ask for and spread false rumors about social media users. Similarly, some common questions asked by someone other than your parents like where you were, who they are, with whom you were, and what you were doing, also come under the domain of cyberbullying. Similarly, the majority of social media users become victims of offensive names and have been threatened by someone through online social websites. Cyberbullying deteriorates well-being physically, socially, and psychologically. Cyberbullying is also vulnerable and threatens the social and economic stability of social media users.
... It is, for instance, often assumed that the most important relationship of an individual can be captured by his/her mobile phone records, and that the "best friend" of an individual is the person he or she is in most contact with. Some evidence to support this assumption has come from surveys [25,27] or from comparison between surveys and mobile phone records [9], which are, however, rarely available for the same population. ...
Comprehensive and quantitative investigations of social theories and phenomena increasingly benefit from the vast breadth of data describing human social relations, which is now available within the realm of computational social science. Such data are, however, typically proxies for one of the many interaction layers composing social networks, which can be defined in many ways and are typically composed of communication of various types (e.g., phone calls, face-to-face communication, etc.). As a result, many studies focus on one single layer, corresponding to the data at hand. Several studies have, however, shown that these layers are not interchangeable, despite the presence of a certain level of correlations between them. Here, we investigate whether different layers of interactions among individuals lead to similar conclusions with respect to the presence of homophily patterns in a population---homophily represents one of the widest studied phenomenon in social networks. To this aim, we consider a dataset describing interactions and links of various nature in a population of Asian students with diverse nationalities, first language and gender. We study homophily patterns, as well as their temporal evolutions in each layer of the social network. To facilitate our analysis, we put forward a general method to assess whether the homophily patterns observed in one layer inform us about patterns in another layer. For instance, our study reveals that three network layers---cell phone communications, questionnaires about friendship, and trust relations---lead to similar and consistent results despite some minor discrepancies. The homophily patterns of the co-presence network layer, however, does not yield any meaningful information about other network layers.
... Several studies have demonstrated that frequency of contact is a reliable index of emotional closeness in relationships 9,10 , and these datasets confirm that frequency of contact by telephone and other digital media (text, email) correlates significantly with frequency of face-to-face contact (p<<0.0001 in each case, N=1006 and N=8967, respectively). Recent research also reveals that personal social networks are hierarchically structured 11,12 , having a layerlike structure with distinct differences in emotional closeness and frequency of contact with alters in the different layers, with an inner core of ~ 5 alters who between them account for about half our total social time 9,13 . ...
Social networks have turned out to be of fundamental importance both for our understanding human sociality and for the design of digital communication technology. However, social networks are themselves based on dyadic relationships and we have little understanding of the dynamics of close relationships and how these change over time. Evolutionary theory suggests that, even in monogamous mating systems, the pattern of investment in close relationships should vary across the lifespan when post-weaning investment plays an important role in maximising fitness. Mobile phone data sets provide us with a unique window into the structure of relationships and the way these change across the lifespan. We here use data from a large national mobile phone dataset to demonstrate striking sex differences in the pattern in the gender-bias of preferred relationships that reflect the way the reproductive investment strategies of the two sexes change across the lifespan: these differences mainly reflect women's shifting patterns of investment in reproduction and parental care. These results suggest that human social strategies may have more complex dynamics than we have tended to assume and a life-history perspective may be crucial for understanding them.
... However, additional constraints, such as available time [46,21] and cognitive limits [47,19], may influence the unique pattern represented by an individual's social signature. It is also possible that there are factors that influence social signatures in combination (e.g. ...
Strong and supportive social relationships are fundamental to our well-being. However, there are costs to their maintenance, resulting in a trade-off between quality and quantity, a typical strategy being to put a lot of effort on a few high-intensity relationships while maintaining larger numbers of less close relationships. It has also been shown that there are persistent individual differences in this pattern; some individuals allocate their efforts more uniformly across their networks, while others strongly focus on their closest relationships. Furthermore, some individuals maintain more stable networks than others. Here, we focus on how personality traits of individuals affect this picture, using mobile phone calls records and survey data from the Mobile Territorial Lab (MTL) study. In particular, we look at the relationship between personality traits and the (i) persistence of social signatures, namely the similarity of the social signature shape of an individual measured in different time intervals; (ii) the turnover in egocentric networks, that is, differences in the set of alters present at two consecutive temporal intervals; and (iii) the rank dynamics defined as the variation of alter rankings in egocentric networks in consecutive intervals. We observe that some traits have effects on the stability of the social signatures as well as network turnover and rank dynamics. As an example, individuals who score highly in the Openness to Experience trait tend to have higher levels of network turnover and larger alter rank variations. On broader terms, our study shows that personality traits clearly affect the ways in which individuals maintain their personal networks.
... Moreover, they decouple and 'de-personalize' the issues in such a way that the model manifestly applies to other kinds of agency, with other kinds of cognitive processing-such as social institutions, cities, and cybernetic systems. The phenonenon arises because (a) there are constraints on the time available for individual agents to interact, (b) there is a strong preference for distributing what time we have unequally among potential alters in ways that reflect the benefits we expect to obtain from them in the future [70], and finally, (c) in addition in sentient agents the willingness to spend time on relationships with others is strongly dictated by our emotional 'warmth' towards them [71]. There are clearly implications here for understanding the opportunities for innovation and cultural exchange, as well as political affinities, and so on. ...
The capacity to engage with technology requires cooperation within communities. Cooperation depends on trust, with trust dependent on the frequency of interaction. This natural basis for human interaction gives rise to a 'fractal' structure for human communities that reflects the patterns of contact between individuals. To understand how innovations and information diffuse through group populations over time we present an argument based on the Promise Theory of trust and derive a universal scaling relation for the formation of social groups by dynamic equilibrium. The implications of our method suggest a broad applicability beyond purely social groupings to general resource constrained interactions, e.g. in work, technology, cybernetics, and generalized socioeconomic systems of all kinds. Models of cultural evolution and the adoption of novel technologies or ideologies need to take these constraints into account.
... The ego acts as the sole hub in its ego network and is connected to all its alters. Every connection between the ego and its alters is characterized by the strength of social ties [81][82][83][84][85][86]. Thus, the ego network model provides a local perspective, which helps in obtaining an in-depth understanding of the role and position of that specific node within the network [87]. ...
Implementing ESG is crucial for China’s modernization journey and corporate sustainability. To deeply understand the current standing of ESG in China, this study leverages online data richness using text mining techniques, specifically Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and ego network analysis. LDA is utilized to identify prevalent discussion topics on ESG, while ego network analysis is applied to examine the relationships and influences among key stakeholders. The scientific aim of this research is to identify prevalent ESG discussion topics, examine the relationships and influences among stakeholders, and determine core ESG focus areas on Chinese society. The findings highlight popular discussion topics such as ESG investment, the ESG notion, green finance transformation, and ESG rating. These topics underscore China’s growing concern for environmental protection and social responsibility. The core discussion areas focus on sustainable development, company social responsibility, and eco-friendliness, framing harmonized progress across economic, social, and environmental realms. Interestingly, governance discourse is sparse; the reasons are analyzed. Through the analysis of online discussions on China’s ESG, this study aims to enhance policymakers’ and participants’ understanding of the true status of China’s ESG, being of practical significance for policy formulation and appropriate ESG strategies.
... One's relationship with one's inner social circle is amongst the most important social interaction for one's psychological and physical well-being (Dunbar, 2018;Schurz et al., 2021). Time since last contact is strongly tied to emotional closeness, particularly for kin relationships (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). Individuals within a shared household may thus represent ones strongest emotional connections as well as most frequently contacted individuals. ...
Human beings may have evolved the largest asymmetries of brain organization in the animal kingdom. Hemispheric left-vs-right specialization is especially pronounced in our species-unique capacities. Yet, brain asymmetry features appear to be strongly shaped by non-genetic influences. We hence charted the largest longitudinal brain-imaging adult resource, yielding evidence that brain asymmetry changes continuously in a manner suggestive of neural plasticity. In the UK Biobank population cohort, we demonstrate that asymmetry changes show robust associations across 959 distinct phenotypic variables spanning 11 categories. We also find that changes in brain asymmetry over years co-occur with changes among specific lifestyle markers. Finally, we reveal relevance of brain asymmetry changes to major disease categories across thousands of medical diagnoses. Our results challenge the tacit assumption that asymmetrical neural systems are highly conserved throughout adulthood.
... Kinship networks may play outsized role during emergencies (41)(42)(43)(44). One might wonder the extent to important ties is members of kinship rather than volitional (nonkinship) networks. ...
Social networks provide a basis for collective resilience to disasters. Combining the quasi-experimental context of a major earthquake in Ya’an, China with anonymized mobile telecommunications records regarding 91,839 Ya’an residents, we use initial bursts of post-disaster communications (e.g., choice of alter, order of calls, latency) to reveal the ‘important ties’ that form the social network backbone. We find that only 26.8% of important ties activated during the earthquake were the strongest ties during normal times. Many important ties were hitherto latent and weak, only to become persistent and strong after the earthquake. We show that which ties activated during a sudden disaster are best predicted by the interaction of embeddedness and tie strength. Moreover, a backbone of important ties alone (without the inclusion of weak ties ordinarily seen as important to bridge communities) is sufficient to generate a hierarchical structure of social networks that connect a disaster zone’s disparate communities.
... A qualitative study during physical distancing in the initial COVID-19 lockdown in the UK described that social distancing measures impact loneliness by limiting face-toface contact and by not perceiving digital communication as sufficient to counteract loneliness [55]. Roberts and Dunbar [56] showed that already two months of no faceto-face contact significantly reduces emotional closeness to friends. These findings suggest that social distancing may have long-lasting consequences on people's social connectedness. ...
... A qualitative study during physical distancing in the initial COVID-19 lockdown in the UK described that social distancing measures impact loneliness by limiting face-toface contact and by not perceiving digital communication as sufficient to counteract loneliness [55]. Roberts and Dunbar [56] showed that already two months of no faceto-face contact significantly reduces emotional closeness to friends. These findings suggest that social distancing may have long-lasting consequences on people's social connectedness. ...
Background
Recent studies report that LGBTQ + people have experienced high levels of mental health problems during COVID-19-related social distancing. Given the well-established association between social isolation and mental health, the main aim of the current study was to investigate differences in mental health and (perceived) social isolation and social support in LGBTQ + individuals compared to heterosexual, cisgender people and to explore whether the hypothesized higher mental health burden in LGBTQ + individuals is (partly) mediated by (perceived) social isolation or social support.
Methods
N = 531 participants indicating belonging to the LGBTQ + community and N = 1826 not identifying as LGBTQ + participated in a cross-sectional online survey during the initial COVID-19-related lockdown in Germany. Standardized questionnaires were used to assess depression, anxiety, suicidality, loneliness and social support. Further, perceived social isolation and face-to-face communication during the lockdown were assessed.
Results
LGBTQ + people had higher levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal thought, were lonelier and experienced less social support than non-LGBTQ + identifying individuals. Mediation analysis showed that the higher levels of mental health burden in LGBTQ + people were (partly) mediated by reduced social connectedness. Further face-to-face contact positively affected mental health by reducing feelings of loneliness.
Conclusion
Given the high impact of loneliness on mental health, governmental actions should be taken to promote social connectedness particularly among LGBTQ + identifying individuals to ensure that the COVID-19 pandemic does not exacerbate the health inequalities that already exist between LGBTQ+-identifying and heterosexual, cisgender people.
... Perceived Emotional Closeness With the Interaction Partner During a Negative SOSE. We asked participants who reported a negative SOSE the extent to which they felt emotionally close to the interaction partner(s) involved in the reported incidence (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). They responded to the one item with a 5-point scale This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
Research has shown that minority stress is linked to poorer mental health across a variety of stigmatized populations, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) people. It is therefore essential to understand factors that can counteract minority stress. To date, most research on LGBQ people’s resilience relied on retrospective reports of stressful identity-salient experiences. This limits the understanding about resilience factors that enable LGBQ people to thrive in the face of minority stressors as they occur on a day-to-day basis. The present study addressed this gap by using a daily diary design to test whether self-compassion protects LGBQ people’s affective well-being from daily stressful sexual orientation-salient experiences (SOSEs). A sample of 235 LGBQ adults completed a baseline survey that assessed self-compassion, as well as brief online surveys twice daily for a maximum of 17 days that assessed SOSEs and affect, providing a total of 3,310 days of data. As anticipated, results of multilevel modeling showed that negative and positive SOSEs were linked to negative and positive evening affect, respectively, at both the daily and person levels. Self-compassion moderated the link between daily negative SOSEs and positive evening affect, such that daily negative SOSEs were linked to lower positive affect only among those with lower self-compassion. Moderation effect was not observed for negative evening affect as an outcome. Exploratory analysis suggested that the buffering effect of self-compassion could be impacted by contextual factors. Our study showed the importance of self-compassion and access to positive SOSEs for LGBQ people’s well-being.
... Another consideration emerging from our study concerns the complementary nature of objective communication information and subjective measures of relationships. Thus, although the use of Call Detail Records avoids some of the shortcomings that have been previously identified in self-reported patterns of communication 6,[40][41][42] , including limited time resolution and poor recall effects, questionnaire or interview data are the only sources of subjective relationship measures (e.g. emotional closeness) and are therefore critical. ...
... However, unlike long-lasting and subjectively more important ties (e.g. close friendships or family) [8,14,26], transient relationships have received very little attention in the literature and therefore it is still unclear what contributes to their emergence and what factors affect their duration. ...
People maintain a variety of different types of social relationships with others. Among them, transient relationships constitute a substantial portion of communication, yet receive little attention in the literature. They are characterized by a limited lifetime, which recent research has found can be effectively predicted by call volume, suggesting that available personal time for communication is a key driver for maintaining these relationships. Whilst there are examples of research on the circadian rhythms of communication over a 24-hour period, little is known about patterns of communication during different days of the week. In this study, we use mobile phone datasets in the UK and Italy to analyze the allocation of time to transient relationships at distinct parts of the week focusing on the differences between relationships with more contact during weekdays (Monday to Friday) or weekends. We find more relationships are created during weekdays, with an overall greater proportion of them receiving more contact during these days of the week in the long term. However, the smaller group of relationships that receive more phone calls during the weekend tend to remain longer in their corresponding ego network (have a longer relationship lifetime). We uncover a sorting process by which some ties are moved from weekdays to weekends and vice versa, mostly in the first half of the relationship. This process also leads to higher mutual information between lifetime and the part of the week in which the relationship is pursued. This suggests that there is an evaluation process early in the relationship that leads to a decision on how to allocate time to different types of transient ties. Overall, these results demonstrate that the part of the week that concentrates the bulk of mobile communication provides information about key aspects of the ego-alter relationship.
... Another consideration emerging from our study concerns the complementary nature of objective communication information and subjective measures of relationships. Thus, although the use of Call Detail Records avoids some of the shortcomings that have been previously identified in self-reported patterns of communication 6,[40][41][42] , including limited time resolution and poor recall effects, questionnaire or interview data are the only sources of subjective relationship measures (e.g. emotional closeness) and are therefore critical. ...
In contrast to long-term relationships, far less is known about the temporal evolution of transient relationships, although these constitute a substantial fraction of people’s communication networks. Previous literature suggests that ratings of relationship emotional intensity decay gradually until the relationship ends. Using mobile phone data from three countries (US, UK, and Italy), we demonstrate that the volume of communication between ego and its transient alters does not display such a systematic decay, instead showing a lack of any dominant trends. This means that the communication volume of egos to groups of similar transient alters is stable. We show that alters with longer lifetimes in ego’s network receive more calls, with the lifetime of the relationship being predictable from call volume within the first few weeks of first contact. This is observed across all three countries, which include samples of egos at different life stages. The relation between early call volume and lifetime is consistent with the suggestion that individuals initially engage with a new alter so as to evaluate their potential as a tie in terms of homophily.
... Both the perceived closeness to one's mother and the experimenter were not influenced by either Mimicry Group, empathy-related traits, or endorphin release. Family relations may be more stable to external social influences than self-chosen ones 79 . Closeness to the experimenter was not modulated by any of the variables of interest. ...
Seminal studies suggest that being mimicked increases experienced social closeness and prosocial behavior to a mimicking confederate (i.e., interaction partner). Here we reexamine these results by considering the role of empathy-related traits, an indirect proxy for endorphin uptake, and their combined effects as an explanation for these results. 180 female participants were mimicked or anti-mimicked in an interaction with a confederate. The effects of being mimicked versus anti-mimicked in relation to empathy-related traits and endorphin release (assessed indirectly via pain tolerance) on experienced closeness and prosocial behavior were assessed using Bayesian analyses. Our results suggest that high individual empathy-related traits increase social closeness to the anti-mimicking and mimicking confederate and to one’s romantic partner, as compared to mimicry alone. Results furthermore strongly suggest that high individual empathy-related traits increase prosocial behavior (donations and willingness to help) as compared to mimicry alone. These findings extend previous work by highlighting that empathy-related traits are more influential in creating positive effects on social closeness and prosocial behavior than a one-shot mimicking encounter.
... Face-to-face contact associated with higher levels of e.c. (Roberts & Dunbar, 2010) Social contamination Sex bias found (Fowler & Christakis, 2009;Christakis & Fowler, 2007) ----Frequency of contact differs among relatives and friends. Between those relatives closely related as parents, siblings, and children (immediate family) frequency of contact was 87 days a year in Canada. ...
Redes sociais, segundo a Hipótese do Cérebro Social (H.C.S.), respondem a um nível de análise do comportamento social, no qual o individuo em questão apresenta um conjunto de contatos sociais, com os quais interage de maneira regular e consistente, e com os quais troca informações pessoais. Embora, a H.C.S. e outras perspectivas teóricas se dediquem a investigar um conjunto semelhante de variáveis relacionadas às redes sociais, essa similaridade não permitiu um consenso sobre a definição deste termo. Em virtude dessa diversidade teórica e metodológica conduzimos três estudos com o intuito de elucidar o fenômeno investigado, uma vez que os instrumentos disponíveis podem não ser suficientemente precisos para definirmos tão fenômeno. Desta forma, discutimos e propomos que as variáveis envolvidas no estudo das redes sociais humanas, podem ser entendidas como fatores interpessoais de três tipos (fatores do Eu, do Contato e do Contexto). A maior presença/ausência de cada uma destas categorias produz uma configuração única nas redes sociais, que, no entanto, parece possuir um viés comum relativo ao modo particularmente humano de se vincular e de estabelecer relacionamentos interpessoais. Esta natureza subjacente é considerada a psicologia humana, ou o “Eu”, um agente inconsciente que ativamente escolhe seus contatos sociais e decide como investir seu tempo e emoção. Este “Eu” possui uma base neural, particularmente o neocórtex, cujo volume está correlacionado com o tamanho dos grupos sociais humanos e não humanos. Foi investigado também como o “Eu” demonstra uma preferência distinta pelos seus parentes maternos sobre os demais tipos de parentes. Tal preferência demonstrou ser suscetível ao ciclo de vida das pessoas, por outro lado sendo menos sensível aos aspectos culturais. Finalmente, encontramos que a maior/menor frequência de parentes e amigos nas redes sociais depende da ordem com a qual a seção de cada grupo social é apresentada nos questionários. Além disso, a ordem na qual os respondentes listam seus contatos sociais depende da proximidade emocional com cada um deles. Concluímos que decisões metodológicas podem interferir no modo como definimos o tamanho e composição dessas redes, e que, portanto, aprimoramentos precisam ser realizados para definirmos o conceito de redes sociais de maneira mais precisa. O conjunto de resultados é interpretado segundo a H.C.S. e a Psicologia Evolucionista, que dão suporte para compreender esse agente psicológico como um produto da evolução, que interage com o ambiente atual, as características que foram selecionadas no passado evolutivo da nossa espécie.
... Over decades important friends change from time to time, while many family members remain in contact. The upshot is that family members are important and connected not only to each other, but also to other important people (Burt, 2000;Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). ...
An individual draws on memory of people and their relations during deliberate recall of his or her social network and during spontaneous generation of people while dreaming. We compare social networks produced by each use of memory in a case study. A dream social network was made for major people in a long series of dreams of a woman. Two people were linked if they occurred in a dream together. The dreamer responded to a questionnaire about relations between major people in waking life. A waking-life social network was made by linking two people if the individual indicated they knew each other. A similarity between the two networks is that people important (central) in one network tend to be important in the other network. The networks have differences. Community structure is more diffuse in the dream social network. The dream social network has fewer completed triangles than the waking-life social network. Assortativity, a network measure, is positive in the waking-life social network, but negative in the dream social network. Differences are consistent with findings that rapid eye movement sleep, the stage from which most dreams are reported, facilitates remote associations in memory. During dreaming, the dreamer's memory of people and their relations is not so much searched as explored.
... Language is often described as the "currency" of relationships (Parr et al., 1997, p. 44). Friendships, especially as children age and enter adolescence, are built on a foundation of intimacy and mutual trust (Bukowski et al., 1993), and maintaining friendship requires continued interaction and communication (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). For adults, the loss of communication skills has resulted in a disproportionate loss of friends, even as family networks remained stable . ...
Purpose
Friendships are enjoyable and desirable relationships with personal and developmental benefits for all people. However, individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) experience barriers to developing and maintaining friendships. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs), with expertise in communication, social pragmatics, and AAC, are uniquely qualified to support friendship for individuals who use AAC. This clinical focus article provides a background on friendship and friendship development generally, then outlines considerations for SLPs to support individuals who use AAC to develop and maintain authentic friendships with peers across the lifespan.
Conclusions
Communication with peers is an essential component of friendship development and maintenance. SLPs should recognize that they have clients on their caseloads who desire friendship and who likely experience barriers to developing or maintaining friendships. When SLPs have a friendship mindset, they identify authentic, motivating opportunities for social interaction; provide the needed tools, including AAC, to support communication within those opportunities; and target communicative competence as part of treatment.
... The wider geographic distribution of the social networks of more religious women might also help to explain why they receive emotional support from more relatives as geographic distance is expected to be less disruptive for emotional connections between kin than it is for non-kin 83 . A study of single mothers in urban Kenya, for example, showed that the road distance to their own mother had no effect on the amount of emotional support they received 84 , and other studies have suggested that it is less costly to maintain emotionally close relationships with relatives [85][86][87] . If religion increases social cohesion 53,54 and strengthens social networks overall 56 , then it may also make it easier to maintain emotional connections with increasingly physically distant relatives. ...
Human social relationships, often grounded in kinship, are being fundamentally altered by globalization as integration into geographically distant markets disrupts traditional kin based social networks. Religion plays a significant role in regulating social networks and may both stabilize extant networks as well as create new ones in ways that are under-recognized during the process of market integration. Here we use a detailed survey assessing the social networks of women in rural Bangladesh to examine whether religiosity preserves bonds among kin or broadens social networks to include fellow practitioners, thereby replacing genetic kin with unrelated co-religionists. Results show that the social networks of more religious women are larger and contain more kin but not more non-kin. More religious women’s networks are also more geographically diffuse and differ from those of less religious women by providing more emotional support, but not helping more with childcare or offering more financial assistance. Overall, these results suggest that in some areas experiencing rapid social, economic, and demographic change, religion, in certain contexts, may not serve to broaden social networks to include non-kin, but may rather help to strengthen ties between relatives and promote family cohesion.
... Mashek & Aron, 2004) and has been repeatedly identified as an important aspect of social connections (e.g. Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004;Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). We also compared possible changes in relation to patriotism (i.e. ...
Social cohesion, associated with lower levels of psychological distress, is a predictor of recovery in emergency situations that may be enhanced by social identities such as national identity. We examined changes in opinions regarding closeness to the nation, patriotism, nationalism, immigration, and opinions about the European Union by administering the National Identity Questionnaire to younger Italian adults living in Central Italy six months before and two months after the initial Covid-19 lockdown to discriminate specific aspects of National identity that may aid adaptation to stressors. Results showed that patriotism increased compared to nationalism while feelings toward European Union membership decreased.
... Tie strength is the potency of a bond between members of a network, reflecting the perceived significance, intensity, and closeness of their relationship (Aral and Walker 2014;Duhan et al. 1997;Granovetter 1973). Given that the strength of a tie also relates to the amount of interaction between actors (Roberts and Dunbar 2011), and attention is a limited resource, average tie strength decreases in indegree (e.g., Gilbert and Karahalios 2009;Katona, Zubcsek, and Sarvary 2011;Miritello et al. 2013). Reflecting this naturally occurring, negative relationship between indegree and tie strength, an influencer's higher indegree may provide followers with a cue that this influencer will devote less effort to nurturing each follower relation, weakening their perceptions of the strength of their tie (Wang et al. 2019). ...
Influencers’ follower count, or indegree, is a key criterion that advertisers use when devising influencer marketing campaigns. However, whether influencers with lower or higher follower count are more effective in generating engagement remains an open question. This multimethod research effort—involving an observational field data analysis, based on 802 Instagram marketing campaigns featuring more than 1,700 influencers, together with an eye-tracking study and laboratory experiments—establishes conclusive evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between influencers’ follower count and engagement with sponsored content. A higher follower count implies broader reach but also cues a weaker relationship that reduces followers’ engagement likelihood. That is, engagement increases, then decreases, as influencer follower count rises. The authors further test the potential moderating effects of two campaign properties: Campaign content customization and brand familiarity. Higher content customization and lower brand familiarity signal that influencers value their relationships with followers and thereby flatten the inverted U-shaped relationship. Managers can leverage these novel results and the related actionable guidelines to improve their influencer marketing strategies.
... Research in this area has consistently shown that communicating more often is connected to more emotionally strong relationships (Hill & Dunbar, 2003;Mok et al., 2007). Roberts and Dunbar (2011) studied the communication patterns in women's social networks, as measured by time since last contact, and found that this was related to the emotional connectedness of that relationship. ...
This study investigates patterns of communication among non-coresident kin in the aftermath of a crisis – the COVID-19 pandemic – focusing on a representative sample of New York City residents from the Poverty Tracker survey. Over half of New Yorkers spoke to their non-coresident family members several times a week during the pandemic and nearly half reported that their communication with non-coresident kin increased since March 2020. Extended kin proved to be important with 27.57% of respondents reporting that they increased communication with at least one extended family member. However, the kin type that New Yorkers were most likely to report increased communication with were siblings, revealing the importance of these ties during times of crisis. Communication with kin varied by sociodemographic characteristics. Women spoke with family members outside of their household more frequently and had higher odds of reporting that their communication increased. There was little support for the oft-stated premise that disadvantaged families by race or social class display greater patterns of kin engagement. In fact, the findings point to the opposite conclusion that families with greater economic resources generally engage with both their nuclear and extended kin more frequently, illuminating patterns of inequality in access to kin resources that may extend well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, this study sheds light on an important yet oft-neglected driver of intra- and inter-generational inequalities, namely access to kin ties as a form of social capital to be activated and leveraged when need arises.
... Doing so allowed the determination of the number of high-quality and rewarding friendships that individuals should focus on to reduce loneliness and improve psychological wellbeing. This is important as these emotionally close friendships require bilateral effort, time and other resources to initiate and maintain and, as such, are more costly in comparison to less-emotionally close relationships (Roberts and Dunbar, 2011). However, despite the importance of these close relationships in terms of loneliness, more peripheral friendships could still be having an impact on our outcome measures. ...
Loneliness is linked to many negative health outcomes and places strain on the economy and the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. To combat these issues, the determinants of loneliness need to be fully understood. Although friendships have been shown to be particularly important in relation to loneliness in older adults, this association has thus far not been explored more closely. Our exploratory study examines the relationship between number of friends and loneliness, depression, anxiety and stress in older adults. Data were obtained from 335 older adults via completion of an online survey. Measures included loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale version 3), depression, anxiety and stress (Depression Anxiety Stress Scales DASS-21). Participants also reported their number of close friends. Regression analyses revealed an inverse curvilinear relationship between number of friends and each of the measures tested. Breakpoint analyses demonstrated a threshold for the effect of number of friends on each of the measures (loneliness = 4, depression = 2, anxiety = 3, stress = 2). The results suggest that there is a limit to the benefit of increasing the number of friends in older adults for each of these measures. The elucidation of these optimal thresholds can inform the practice of those involved in loneliness interventions for older adults. These interventions can become more targeted; focusing on either establishing four close friendships, increasing the emotional closeness of existing friendships or concentrating resources on other determinants of loneliness in this population.
... This finding is in line with the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, which posits that older adults narrow their social networks as they age to allocate more emotional resources to fewer relationships (Carstensen, 2021). While social connections and communication often go hand-in-hand with feelings of solidarity and closeness, heightened levels of communication may also stretch individuals beyond comfort (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). ...
Research Design and Methods
Using data from the AARP Foundation’s Loneliness and Social Connection Survey of adults 45+ (N = 3,009), including 10% who identified as LGB, we derive entropy scores, which capture the extent to which network size and quality of relationships are evenly distributed. A series of linear regressions were conducted to examine sexual orientation, social network indicators, and their interactions in predicting loneliness.
Results
We found a positive association between social communication diversity and loneliness. This finding was qualified by the interaction with sexual orientation. In addition, we found a negative association between support diversity and loneliness, an effect that was stronger for LGB participants than for heterosexual participants. The effect of support diversity on loneliness was much stronger for LGB adults than heterosexual adults.
Discussion and Implications
While LGB adults tend to score higher on the loneliness scale overall, the findings suggest that communication and support diversity have uniquely different patterns of associations for sexual minority groups. This study highlights the importance of considering multiple dimensions of social networks and has implications for addressing loneliness for heterosexual and LGB adults.
... Those are learned through socialization processes and are preserved and transferred to the online sphere [6]. Indeed, women use technology for social connectivity more than men [14], and talk more frequently and longer [15], including on WhatsApp [16]. Frequency of communication, in turn, was linked to the emotional intensity of the relationship [16]. ...
WhatsApp is one of the more popular messaging applications used in interpersonal relationships, often providing participants with emotional social support. As Eagly and Crowley (1986) posit that gender plays a salient role in social interactions, the present study examined gender differences in Family WhatsApp usage and whether emotional support is more frequently a goal for women than for men. Using a snowball approach, graduate students in family studies and behavioral science were asked to complete questionnaires concerning their family WhatsApp usage (N=298). Findings showed that women use WhatsApp more than men and, particularly for individual emotional support. It appears that gender differences are being preserved and carried on from the offline to the online settings and are more noticeable in the private form of the platform, as it may encourage more intimate emotional expressions.
... Over time, decreased in-person contact can have serious and lasting effects on the social network. Roberts and Dunbar [69] found that feelings of closeness between friends and family members dropped by more than 30 percent after two months of no in-person contact. After five months, feelings of closeness with friends dropped close to 80 percent. ...
Since the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, levels of loneliness have increased among the general population and especially among sexual minorities, such as gay men and other men who have sex with men, who already experienced more problems with social isolation before the pandemic. We analyzed how the disruption of the social network and social support structures by containment measures impact loneliness among gay and other men having sex with men. Our sample consisted of gay and other men having sex with men who had in person communication with family as well as heterosexual friends and homosexual friends before the lockdown (N = 461). Multivariate regression analyses were performed with social provisions (social interaction and reliable alliance) and loneliness as dependent variables. A change from in-person communication with gay peers before the pandemic to remote-only or no communication with gay peers during the pandemic, mediated by change in social integration, was related to an increased feeling of loneliness during the pandemic compared with before the pandemic. There were some unexpected findings, which should be interpreted in the specific social context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. On average, social integration and reliable alliance among MSM increased during the lockdown, even though in-person communication decreased and loneliness increased. Our results show it is critical to maintain a view of social support and social loneliness as lodged within larger social and cultural contexts that ultimately shape the mechanisms behind them.
... As humans are social beings, we anticipate that relevant models for designing humancentric protocols could be found in domains dealing with the study of individuals (e.g., cognitive psychology [GHP11,GTA99,S05]), as well as social communities (e.g., sociology and anthropology [HD03], [ZSHD05], [RD11]). Furthermore, models derived in microeconomics [FG07,FF02,CF06] can be used to model resource availability and the way nodes can "trade" them, as well as the trust associated with them. ...
Cyber-Physical convergence, the fast expansion of the Internet at its edge, and tighter interactions between human users and their personal mobile devices push towards an Internet where the human user becomes more central than ever, and where their personal devices become their proxies in the cyber world, in addition to acting as a fundamental tool to sense the physical world. The current Internet paradigm, which is infrastructure-centric, is not the right one to cope with such emerging scenario with a wider range of applications. This calls for a radically new Internet paradigm, that we name the Internet of People (IoP), where the humans and their personal devices are not seen merely as end users of applications, but become active elements of the Internet. Note that IoP is not a replacement of the current Internet infrastructure, but it exploits legacy Internet services as (reliable) primitives to achieve end-to-end connectivity on a global-scale. In this visionary paper, we first discuss the key features of the IoP paradigm along with the underlying research issues and challenges. Then we present emerging networking and computing paradigms that are anticipating IoP
... • IoP is human-centric, and, as a consequence, is multi-disciplinary, as IoP algorithms should be based on quantitative models of the human individual and social behaviour derived and validated in various research communities, such as sociology and anthropology ( [HD03], [ZSHD05], [RD11), cognitive psychology ([GTA99, S05, GHP11]), micro-economics [FG07,FF02,CF06], physics of complex systems (e.g., [BA99,DM03,C07]). • IoP is device-centric, as users' devices are seen as "core IoP nodes", which are proxies of the humans in the cyber world, and host a significant part of the logic of the IoP algorithms. ...
The cyber-physical convergence, the fast expansion of the Internet at its edge, and tighter interactions between human users and their personal mobile devices push towards a data-centric Internet where the human user becomes more central than ever. We argue that this will profoundly impact primarily on the way data should be handled in the Next Generation Internet. It will require a radical change of the Internet data-management paradigm, from the current platform-centric to a human-centric model. In this paper we present a new paradigm for Internet data management that we name Internet of People (IoP) because it embeds human behavior models in its algorithms. To this end, IoP algorithms exploit quantitative models of the humans' individual and social behavior, from sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, physics. IoP is not a replacement of the current Internet networking infrastructure, but it exploits legacy Internet services as (reliable) primitives to achieve end-to-end connectivity on a global-scale. In this opinion paper, we first discuss the key features of the IoP paradigm along with the underlying research issues and challenges. Then, we present emerging data-management paradigms that are anticipating IoP.
... However, the study of human nature is decidedly controversial [44]. While evolutionary psychology could theorise a model of human nature linked to biological functioning within a social context [92], the jump to then associate these biological processes with human well-functioning raises deeply ethical issues. This is particularly clear when we recognize the way oppressive modes of social organisation are often justifed upon the basis of supposedly 'natural' hierarchies of human groups. ...
The psychological costs of the attention economy are often considered through the binary of harmful design and healthy use, with digital well-being chiefly characterised as a matter of personal responsibility. This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to highlight the empirical, ideological, and political limits of embedding this individualised perspective in computational discourses and designs of digital well-being measurement. We will reveal well-being to be a culturally specific and environmentally conditioned concept and will problematize user engagement as a universal proxy for well-being. Instead, the contributing factors of user well-being will be located in environing social, cultural, and political conditions far beyond the control of individual users alone. In doing so, we hope to reinvigorate the issue of digital well-being measurement as a nexus point of political concern, through which multiple disciplines can study experiences of digital ill as symptomatic of wider social inequalities and (capitalist) relations of power.
Over the last two decades, Social Network Analysis (SNA) has become a standard tool in various social science disciplines. In social psychology, however, the use of SNA methodology remains scarce. This research identifies gaps in SNA use in Social Psychology and offers pathways for its further development. It reviews all empirical papers using SNA published in high‐ranking social psychology journals over the last three decades. Findings reveal that SNA has been used across striking diversity of fields and subdomains central to the discipline, confirming its relevance for any field in Social Psychology in which the role of interpersonal or intergroup relationships is central to understand psychological and behavioural outcomes. However, the use of SNA in Social Psychology has been mostly limited to non‐experimental and non‐longitudinal studies, using student samples and with a focus on basic measurements of network structures such as density and centrality. The contributions of SNA to the understanding of psychosocial mechanisms have therefore remained modest. We propose several strategies by which such gaps can be filled in future research and the full potential of SNA for social psychology realized.
The situation of deep uncertainty is defined by the absence of any statistical evaluations of the situation development. For instance, such situations may include events that occur for the first time. We use scenario analysis to model the potential outcomes of events affecting networks under deep uncertainty. Centrality indices are used to identify vulnerable vertices in networks. We consider classic and new centrality indices. The new centrality indices take into account the properties of vertices and group influence. We have constructed a network of export/import and production data of basic crops (rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, barley, rye, millet, buckwheat, oats), as well as oil and rare earth compound trade for 2020. We have considered scenarios of various situations and identified the most vulnerable countries in these scenarios.
Dunbar’s number is the cognitive limit of human beings to maintain stable relationships with other individuals in their social networks, and it is found to be 150. It is based on the neocortex size of humans. Usually, Dunbar’s number and related phenomena are studied from the perspective of an individual. Dunbar’s number also plays a crucial role in evolutionary psychology and allied areas. However, no study done so far has considered a couple who are in a stable relationship as a system from the perspective of Dunbar’s number and its hierarchy layers. In this paper, we study the impact of Dunbar’s number and Dunbar’s hierarchy from the perspective of a couple by studying mathematically the conjoint Dunbar graphs for a couple. The cost of romance is the loss of almost two people from one’s support network when a human being enters into a new relationship. Thus, we obtain mathematically that there is no significant change in one’s friendship if human beings spend negligible time with their partners. Also, along with marriage and friendship development, we attempt to assess how a person’s social network structure holds up over the course of a romantic relationship. The stability of personal social networks is discussed through soft set theory and balance theoretic approach.
Scholars have long recognized that interpersonal networks play a role in mobilizing social movements. Yet, many questions remain. This Element addresses these questions by theorizing about three dimensions of ties: emotionally strong or weak, movement insider or outsider, and ingroup or cross-cleavage. The survey data on the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests show that weak and cross-cleavage ties among outsiders enabled the movement to evolve from a small provocation into a massive national mobilization. In particular, the authors find that Black people mobilized one another through social media and spurred their non-Black friends to protest by sharing their personal encounters with racism. These results depart from the established literature regarding the civil rights movement that emphasizes strong, movement-internal, and racially homogenous ties. The networks that mobilize appear to have changed in the social media era. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
A fundamental question of any new relationship is, will it last? Transient relationships, recently defined by the authors, are an ideal type of social tie to explore this question: these relationships are characterized by distinguishable starting and ending temporal points, linking the question of tie longevity to relationship finite lifetime. In this study, we use mobile phone data sets from the UK and Italy to analyse the weekly allocation of time invested in maintaining transient relationships. We find that more relationships are created during weekdays, with a greater proportion of them receiving more contact during these days of the week in the long term. The smaller group of relationships that receive more phone calls during the weekend tend to remain active for more time. We uncover a sorting process by which some ties are moved from weekdays to weekends and vice versa , mostly in the first half of the relationship. This process also carries more information about the ultimate lifetime of a tie than the part of the week when the relationship started, which suggests an early evaluation period that leads to a decision on how to allocate time to different types of transient ties.
Social media were designed to connect people and support interpersonal relationships. However, whether social media use is linked to the connection between the self and others is unknown. The present research reviewed findings across psychology to address whether social media use is linked to defining and expressing the self as connected to others (i.e., interdependence) versus separate from others (i.e., independence) and whether this link appears in both individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Eligible studies reported an association between social media use (e.g., time spent, frequency of use) and a characteristic supportive of independence (e.g., narcissism, envy, self-enhancement). Meta-analytic results of 133 effect sizes across the reviewed studies show that social media use is linked to independence rather than interdependence. This relationship was more pronounced in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures. These findings suggest that characteristics linked to social media use differ from what one might expect based on the design of social media to connect people.
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic that has been going on since the end of 2019 impacts people on both the physical and psychological levels. However, the psychological status, especially its underlying psychosocial mechanisms among the general population in Wuhan, the earliest epicenter and hardest-hit city in China during the pandemic, has not been well investigated. This study aimed to examine the relationships between exposures, perceived risk, and psychological distress among the general population in Wuhan during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Methods
Data were from a cross-sectional online survey conducted from 20 February to 4 March 2020. Final analyses included 4,234 Wuhan respondents. A 5-item Hopkins Symptom Checklist was adopted to assess respondents’ psychological distress.
Results
It was found that nervousness, fear, and worry were the most common symptoms among Wuhan residents during the lockdown. Exposure within a close physical distance, exposure within the social network, and perceived risk are significantly positively related to respondents’ psychological distress. Moreover, perceived risk mediated the effects of exposures on respondents’ psychological condition.
Discussion
These findings conduce to identify the populations at higher risk of suffering psychological disturbance during the pandemic and are expected to inform the policymakers and mental health professionals to monitor and improve the perception of risk among the target population by appropriate interventions.
As a prominent social media tool, Twitter enables prompt dissemination of financial news and information, which can have a substantial impact on investors’ perceptions and decision-making processes. The propagation of financial news and information through Twitter can either positively or negatively affect investors’ perceptions. As per network theory, the impact of information on one's perception and behavior is known as the network effect. Since Twitter is also a network, we tried to contribute more to this theory in this study by considering other factors that can have an impact on the perceptions of investors. We argue that the impact of financial information and news on investors’ perceptions is moderated by other factors such as connectivity, social ties, and network size of the network. To establish the links between them, we considered three key factors in investors’ networks: (1) network connectivity (network structure); (2) social ties circle (friends, family, colleagues); and (3) size of the network (number of contacts). The results of this study indicate that highly connected investors receive more information and hence, the impact of news is derived from the connectivity of investors within the network. The findings of the study also show that the social ties circle plays a crucial role in determining the impact of the news. The findings further indicate that the impact of news on investors’ perceptions also depends on the theme of the news.
The multidisciplinary field of personal relationships has focused primarily on strong ties (romantic relationships, friendships, family relationships). However, acquaintances (weak ties) are pervasive in people's lives, contribute to well‐being, influence strong ties, and can become strong ties over time. This review article synthesizes several areas of literature about the role of acquaintances (weak ties) in the web of relationships and about the formation of acquaintanceships. The terms acquaintances and weak ties are used interchangeably in this article to refer to the type of relationship that exists in the peripheral layers of social networks. In the first section, I discuss the literature on factors associated with the size of people's acquaintance network, needs met by acquaintances (compared to those of closer ties), health and happiness benefits of interaction with acquaintances, and the dark side of acquaintances including having unwanted acquaintances. In the second section, I discuss how acquaintanceships are formed, and particularly the type that can develop into a closer tie. This section summarizes research from the literatures on friendship formation, relationship initiation, attraction, and first interactions of dyads at zero‐acquaintance. I end the article by identifying several research topics on acquaintances that could be studied by the next generation of scholars.
This chapter is concerned with the social and psychological impact of mobile phone text messaging, or “texting”. The increasing and widespread use of texting is revolutionising communication in today’s society. It is estimated that 72.1% of people in Western Europe own a mobile phone (Katz and Aakhus, 2002) and that over 1 billion messages of up to 160 characters are sent each month in the UK alone (AOL mobile, 2002). “Mobile messaging is the modern way to communicate. It’s instant, location independent and personal. That’s why the new mobile phone generation has started to favour messaging, making it one of the fastest-growing segments of the mobile communications industry” (Nokia, 2002). The growth in the volume of text messaging, particularly among young people (Haig, 2002), is asocial phenomenon which needs to be explained, and its impact on human relationships and psychological well-being understood.
This paper examines social network size in contemporary Western society based on the exchange of Christmas cards. Maximum
network size averaged 153.5 individuals, with a mean network size of 124.9 for those individuals explicitly contacted; these
values are remarkably close to the group size of 150 predicted for humans on the basis of the size of their neocortex. Age,
household type, and the relationship to the individual influence network structure, although the proportion of kin remained
relatively constant at around 21%. Frequency of contact between network members was primarily determined by two classes of
variable: passive factors (distance, work colleague, overseas) and active factors (emotional closeness, genetic relatedness).
Controlling for the influence of passive factors on contact rates allowed the hierarchical structure of human social groups
to be delimited. These findings suggest that there may be cognitive constraints on network size.
Data on the number of adults that an individual contacts at least once a month in a set of British populations yield estimates of network sizes that correspond closely to those of the typical "sympathy group" size in humans. Men and women do not differ in their total network size, but women have more females and more kin in their networks than men do. Kin account for a significantly higher proportion of network members than would be expected by chance. The number of kin in the network increases in proportion to the size of the family; as a result, people from large families have proportionately fewer non-kin in their networks, suggesting that there is either a time constraint or a cognitive constraint on network size. A small inner clique of the network functions as a support group from whom an individual is particularly likely to seek advice or assistance in time of need. Kin do not account for a significantly higher proportion of the support clique than they do for the wider network of regular social contacts for either men or women, but each sex exhibits a strong preference for members of their own sex.
In this paper we compare two methods for estimating the size of personal networks using a nationally representative sample of the United States. Both methods rely on the ability of respondents to estimate the number of people they know in specific subpopulations of the U.S. (e.g., diabetics, Native Americans) and people in particular relation categories (e.g., immediate family, coworkers). The results demonstrate a remarkable similarity between the average network size generated by both methods (approximately 291). Similar results were obtained with a separate national sample. An attempt to corroborate our estimates by replication among a population we suspect has large networks (clergy), yielded a larger average network size. Extensive investigation into the existence of response effects showed some preference for using certain numbers when making estimates, but nothing that would significantly affect the estimate of network size beyond about 6 percent. We conclude that both methods for estimating personal network size yield valid and reliable proxies for actual network size, but questions about accuracy remain.
Community ties with friends and relatives are a principal means by which people and households get supportive resources. Quantitative and qualitative data from the second East York study are used to evaluate six potential explanations of why different types of ties provide different kinds of supportive resources: tie strength, contact, group processes, kinship,network members' characteristics, and similarities and dissimilarities between network members in such characteristics. Most relatioships provide specialized support. The kinds of support provided are related more to characteristics of the relationship than to characteristics of the network members themselves. Strong ties provide emotional aid, small services, and companionship. Parents and adult children exchange financial aid, emotional aid, large services, and small services. Physically accessible ties provide services. Women provide emotional aid. Friends, neighbors, and siblings make up about half of all supportive relationships. The ensemble o...
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.
To study the connections binding close relationships and networks of kin and friends, measures of social participation were developed from daily reports of social activity provided by 89 undergraduates involved in dating relationships. These measures included size of the network and the frequency and length of time spent interacting with network members. As hypothesized, all network measures were inversely related to the stage of courtship under scrutiny. Ss in the later stages of courtship, relative to those in the early stages of courtship, interacted with fewer people, less often, and for shorter periods. However, based on longitudinal analyses, frequency and duration were more robust indicators than size of changes in social participation with network members concurrent with an advancing or deteriorating close relationship. Findings are discussed in light of the advantages of longitudinal over cross-sectional designs. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Everyday social activities take place within an environment peopled by a specific set of individuals (our social network). The author reviews the evidence that our social world is both limited in size and highly structured. This structuring consists of a series of circles of acquaintanceship, the successive layers of which progressively include more individuals with whom we have less intense relationships. Although these layers have very consistent typical sizes, there is considerable individual variation because of individual differences in gender, personality, and social-cognitive abilities. The author considers some of the implications of these structural components for the way in which we organize our social lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two studies, with 58 female and 49 male undergraduates, evaluated potential explanations of the finding that males' same-sex interaction is less intimate than that of females. These explanations concerned differing criteria for intimacy, labeling differences, selectivity in the occasions or partners for intimacy, the question of capability vs preference, and gender-cued stereotypic judgments. In a replication of the essential datum, diarylike reports of naturalistic interaction indicated that males' same-sex interaction was substantially less intimate than that of females. Subsequently, Ss were asked to judge standard stimuli and to have an intimate conversation in a laboratory setting. Analyses revealed that the sex difference could not be attributed to differing criteria, labeling, selectivity, or gender-cued judgments. Further analyses indicated that preference played more of a role in the sex difference than did capability, because situational manipulations eliminated the sex difference. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In 2 studies, the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale, a single-item, pictorial measure of closeness, demonstrated alternate-form and test–retest reliability; convergent validity with the Relationship Closeness Inventory (E. Berscheid et al, 1989), the R. J. Sternberg (1988) Intimacy Scale, and other measures; discriminant validity; minimal social desirability correlations; and predictive validity for whether romantic relationships were intact 3 mo later. Also identified and cross-validated were (1) a 2-factor closeness model (Feeling Close and Behaving Close) and (2) longevity–closeness correlations that were small for women vs moderately positive for men. Five supplementary studies showed convergent and construct validity with marital satisfaction and commitment and with a reaction-time (RT)-based cognitive measure of closeness in married couples; and with intimacy and attraction measures in stranger dyads following laboratory closeness-generating tasks. In 3 final studies most Ss interpreted IOS Scale diagrams as depicting interconnectedness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Abstract Within social networks, relationships are “enacted.” They grow or decline through communication,and the exchange of social resources. Although geographic distance can inhibit enactment, telecommunication technologies (e.g., phone, email, IM) are increasingly being used to maintain relationships over long distances. In this paper, we examine the role these technologies play in maintaining friendships. Taking advantage of a natural situation in which friendships are at risk of ending, we follow students in their transition from high school to college. When students move away from home, they reduce both their communication,with their old high school friends and their sense of psychological
Multi-level analysis provides a new approach to studying the sources of network capital by integrating analyses of individuals, interpersonal ties and the personal networks in which they are embedded. Using this approach aids theory and substantive analysis. Toronto data show that while tie characteristics are key predictors of supportive behavior, networks facilitate the supportive behavior of ties and individuals. For example, parents and children are more supportive in networks with high percentages of parents and children. Individual agency, dyadic duets, and network properties all make network capital available for social support., founding stalwarts of East York's Neighbourhood Information Centre, who have demonstrated or thirty years that an organization can provide social capital and foster supportive networks.
As suggested by previous research, childlessness can thoroughly affect the likelihood of giving and receiving help to kin, even in modern societies. In this paper we show that childless women over thirty-five have had more recent contact with their nephews/nieces than mothers. Yet, both groups showed no significant differences in contact with their uncles/aunts. This sug-gests heightened social investment in kin with high reproductive value by childless women com-pared to mothers. Results are discussed with reference to kin selection theory.
The paper is based on a study on the uses of the telephone in 317 French homes. Detailed billing data over four months were collected and compared with interviews concerning each regular phone user in the household. We focus here on the correlation between the observed duration of phone calls and the gender of callers and receivers. The reasons why women telephone more are discussed and related to the gender homophily in telephone networks. Data also show that the duration of phone calls depends on the receiver's gender. We suggest that politeness rules may govern the telephone call, did we argue that these civility rules explain in part why the receiver's gender exerts the greatest effect on how the call is managed and on its overall duration. We propose to explore the hypothesis that telephone calls have an interactional format similar to that of a visit, but that status differences between caller and receiver may influence the unfolding of interactions between men and women through the caller's adjustment of his or her interaction style to the receiver's gender. Research on social uses of the telephone has systematically shown clear gender differences: women use the telephone at home more often than men (Chabrol and Périn 1993; Claisse and Rowe 1993; Dordick and LaRose 1992; Ling 1998; Moyal 1992). Women's inclination to use the telephone at home has generally been explained by the gender distribution of family roles and by women's investment in private life and intimate relationships. Using Bakan's (1966) "agency versus communion" distinction (and treating this distinction as describing masculine versus feminine identity orientations) and/or drawing on work collected by Parsons and Bales (1955) on the social division of gender family roles, various authors have centered their explanations on the social positions occupied by the sexes and on their social psychological characteristics. .
Personal relationships have long been of central interest to social scientists, but the subject of friendship has been relatively neglected. Moreover, most studies of friendship have been social psychological. Placing Friendship in Context, first published in 1999, is a unique collection bridging social psychological and social structural research to advance understanding of this important subject. In it, some of the world's leading researchers explore the social and historical contexts in which friendships and other similar informal ties develop and how it is that these contexts shape the form and substance the relationships assume. Together, they demonstrate that friendship cannot be understood from individualistic or dyadic perspectives alone, but is a relationship significantly influenced by the environment in which it is generated. By analysing the ways in which friendships articulate with the social structures in which they are embedded, Placing Friendship in Context redescribes such personal relationships at both the macro and the micro level.
In both modern humans and non-human primates, time and cognitive constraints place an upper bound on the number of social relationships an individual can maintain at a given level of intensity. Similar constraints are likely to have operated throughout hominin evolution, shaping the size and structure of social networks. One of the key trends in human evolution, alongside an increase in brain size, is likely to have been an increase in group size, resulting in a larger number of social relationships that would have to be maintained over time. The network approach demonstrates that relationships should not be viewed as dyadic ties between two individuals, but as embedded within a larger network of ties between network members. This network can act as a scaffold to the dyadic tie, reducing the time and cognitive costs of maintaining the relationship. Together with relationships based on kinship, this scaffolding may have allowed for larger group sizes to be maintained among hominins than would be possible if such networks were based purely on dyadic ties between individuals.
The tendency for relationships to weaken and disappear I discuss as decay, and functions describing the rate of decay over time I discuss as decay functions. Three conclusions are supported with 4 years of network data on a study population of bankers and their colleagues in a financial organization. (1) Factors known from cross-sectional evidence to be associated with strong relationships are associated with slow decay; decay is slower in relations between colleagues with a strong prior relationship (inertia), working in the same corporate division (homophily), prominent in the social hierarchy of bankers (status), or connected indirectly through many third parties (embedding). (2) Regardless of slower decay in certain relations, decay has a pattern over time similar to the population ecology "liability of newness" attributed to selection and learning, with the added complication of networks and people aging simultaneously. Decay is a power function of time in which the probability of decay decreases with tie age (years for which a relationship has existed) and node age (years for which a banker has been in the study population). (3) Embedding stability is responsible for the greater stability of older relationships. The decay-inhibiting effects of age occur where embedding is disrupted but not where embedding is continuous. The third conclusion is interesting in highlighting the first derivative of social structure as a causal variable: embedding has to be measured for its change, rather than level, to see both of its distinct effects on relationship decay.
The phenomenon of idealization in college premarital long-distance relationships is explored. In this study, 71 college couples participated in a survey. Findings indicate long-distance couples have more restricted communication and are more idealized than their geographically close counterparts. Further, an associative pattern between restricted communication and positive relational images is found. Speculation is offered that long-distance couples, due to their limited contact, postpone realistic assessments. Implications of these findings are discussed.
In this chapter I review empirical studies directly testing the hypotheses of my 1973 paper "The Strength of Weak Ties" (hereafter "SWT") and work that elaborates those hypotheses theoretically or uses them to suggest new empirical research not discussed in my original formulation. Along the way, I will reconsider various aspects of the theoretical argument, attempt to plug some holes, and broaden its base.
The extent and function of the parent-child bond, conceptualized according to Ainsworth's (M.D.S. Ainsworth, M. C. Blehar, E. Walters, and S. Wally [1978],Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation, Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ) model of attachment, was explored for a group of first-year college students (N=173) at a selective, prestigious, northeastern university. Overall, students' descriptions of their parental relationships were positive and resembled Ainsworth's secure attachment type. Most students viewed their parents as a secure base, encouraging independence and remaining available as a source of support when needed. Furthermore, students indicated that they sought parental help more than a moderate amount in situations of stress. For female students, close parental relationships were found to be positively associated with self-reports of assertion.
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During the course of the past year, at least four different academic surveys have been conducted, each focusing to some extent on the impact of Internet use on the quantity and quality of interpersonal communication and sociability. Remarkably, these studies arrive at starkly different conclusions regarding the social repercussions of Internet use. At the heart of this debate is whether Internet use can be a potentially isolating activity or one that leads to substantially greater communication among people and thus enhances human connectivity and sociability. Based on an analysis of these studies' key findings and methodological approaches, this article attempts to understand the role of the Internet in shaping our interpersonal relations. The key findings suggest that Internet users do not become more sociable; rather, they already display a higher degree of social connectivity and participation, due to the fact that they are better educated, better off financially, and less likely to be among the elderly. And simply because of the inelasticity of time, Internet use may actually reduce interpersonal interaction and communication.
Although personality factors are known to influence sociality, there is as yet no evidence to suggest that they directly affect the size of social networks. In the present study, 168 adults completed questionnaires on social network size (focussing on the two inner, most intimate layers of the network: support clique and sympathy group) and the personality sub-scales for extraversion and neuroticism from the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). There was a significant gender-bias in contacts at both levels (suggesting a degree of sexual social segregation). Extraversion was correlated with the size of support clique, but not the size of the sympathy group. However, age correlated with extraversion score, and when age was controlled for, there was no significant correlation between extraversion and the size of either the support clique or sympathy group. There was also no correlation between neuroticism and the size of support clique and sympathy group. These results suggest, when a wide range of ages are included in the sample, the relationship between personality and network size is more complex than previous studies have shown.
This article presents the results of new data collection in Mexico about the relationship between child well-being and social networks. Two research questions guide the analysis. First, under what conditions do networks generate greater (lesser) support? Second, what kinds of networks are associated with healthier children? We explore the health status effects of several dimensions of social networks, including network size, kinship roles, interaction (proximity, contact, and coresidence), and provision of financial and emotional support. Our key findings suggest that networks containing more extended kin and coresident ties offer greater support resources to mothers with young children, especially among the poorest households. We also find that network structures characterized by more social support and greater interaction with extended, rather than immediate, kin help sustain healthier children. Together these findings indicate the advantages of examining specific role relationships in network research among economically marginalized families and attest to the importance of social networks founded on principles of reciprocity, confianza, and compadrazgo to the well-being of Mexican families.
Multilevel modeling (MLM) is growing in use throughout the social sciences. Although daunting from a mathematical perspective, MLM is relatively easy to employ once some basic concepts are understood. In this article, I present a primer on MLM, describing some of these principles and applying them to the analysis of a multilevel data set on doctor–patient communication during medical consultations.
The tendency for relationships to weaken and disappear I discuss as decay, and functions describing the rate of decay over time I discuss as decay functions. Three conclusions are supported with 4 years of network Ž . data on a study population of bankers and their colleagues in a financial organization. 1 Factors known from cross-sectional evidence to be associated with strong relationships are associated with slow decay; decay is Ž . slower in relations between colleagues with a strong prior relationship inertia , working in the same corporate Ž . Ž . division homophily , prominent in the social hierarchy of bankers status , or connected indirectly through Ž .Ž. many third parties embedding . 2 Regardless of slower decay in certain relations, decay has a pattern over time similar to the population ecology ''liability of newness'' attributed to selection and learning, with the added complication of networks and people aging simultaneously. Decay is a power function of time in which Ž . Ž the probability of decay decreases with tie age years for which a relationship has existed and node age years . Ž . for which a banker has been in the study population . 3 Embedding stability is responsible for the greater stability of older relationships. The decay-inhibiting effects of age occur where embedding is disrupted but not where embedding is continuous. The third conclusion is interesting in highlighting the first derivative of social structure as a causal variable: embedding has to be measured for its change, rather than level, to see both of its distinct effects on relationship decay. q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
This study explains changes in contact frequency in relationships of the preseparation personal network in the early and later years after partners separate. The explanation includes general and separation-related characteristics of the network relationship and the individual. Personal interviews were conducted in three waves of a 12-year longitudinal study with 40 men and 64 women who separated in 1987 or 1988. Multilevel analyses on 1639 network ties showed that multiplex and kin relationships remained over the long term. Contact changes depended on network relationship characteristics, structural conditions, perceived restrictions, and alternative network relationships. Separation-related characteristics were more important in the early years, general characteristics in the later years after the separation
The transition from high school to college is an important phase for adolescents in social as well as academic aspects. This study examined the changes that occur in high school best friendships during the first year of college. Results revealed that during the first year in college high school best friendships declined in satisfaction, commitment, rewards, and investments. During this period there was also an increase in costs and alternatives to best friend relationships. Proximity did not influence the friendships; however, level of communication did moderate friendship deterioration. Furthermore, individuals who continued their best friendship reported engaging in more maintenance behaviors of positivity, supportiveness, self-disclosure, and interaction than individuals who reported a change in the relationship to close or casual friendship. Maintaining the best friendship also appeared to buffer adolescents from social loneliness. The results are discussed in terms of the implications of transitions on adolescent friendships.
This article analyzes variations in interaction with non-coresident adult kin based on comparable cross-national surveys conducted in 2001 in 27 countries. The two main dimensions of kin contact are considered: (1) overall levels and (2) the relative emphasis given to contacts with primary kin (parents, adult children, siblings) and secondary kin (aunts, cousins, in-laws). Age-adjusted variations in kin contact between countries are much greater than those within countries. These results do not confirm the commonly hypothesized existence of well-defined family system boundaries in Europe arising from historical factors. The similarity of patterns of countries outside Europe with European countries with which they have historical ties suggests cultural factors are important in explaining interaction with kin, whereas welfare regimes appear to have little explanatory value. Within Europe, kin contact levels are more strongly related to a north/south divide than to indicators of economic development or religiosity. The findings suggest that neither of the extreme assumptions—homogenizing pressures toward a nuclear family model or persistent well-defined groupings arising from historical contexts—can be substantiated. Rather, there is a continuum in family behaviors over a substantial range, related to a number of explanatory factors.
Studies of active personal networks have primarily focused on providing reliable estimates of the size of the network. In this study, we examine how compositional properties of the network and ego characteristics are related to variation in network size. There was a negative relationship between mean emotional closeness and network size, for both related and unrelated networks. Further, there was a distinct upper bound on total network size. These results suggest that there are constraints both on the absolute number of individuals that ego can maintain in the network, and also on the emotional intensity of the relationships that ego can maintain with those individuals.
In this paper, it is shown that multilevel methods are particularly well-suited for the analysis of relations in personal networks and the changes in these relations. Justice is done to the hierarchical nested structure of the data and the resulting dependence between observations “within egos”. Multilevel techniques can also give more specific insight on why personal networks change: they allow to distinguish between the influence of individual and of tie characteristics on the stability of personal networks as a whole and of specific ties within a personal network. This is illustrated by an application to changes in networks of four Dutch samples experiencing different life events.
Although the concept ‘friend’ is critical to both theoretical and empirical studies of social relations, it is a very ambiguous term. Most researchers seem to take its meaning for granted. This paper reports an inductive study designed to find out what aspects of real relations are correlated with applications of the label ‘friend’. In a cross-sectional survey of 1050 adults living in northern California in 1977, we obtained the names and descriptions of 19417 associates. Of these, 59% were labelled ‘friends’. Several regression analyses suggest that this label is likely to be applied: to an overwhelming majority of non-relatives in a largely unsystematic way; to associates lacking other, specialized role-relations; to people of the same age: to people known a long time; and to people with whom respondents had primarily sociable, rather than intimate or material, involvements.
Most primates live in social groups in which affiliative bonds exist between individuals. Because these bonds need to be maintained through social interactions (grooming in most primates), sociality will be limited by time constraints. It has previously been shown that the time primates invest in grooming increases with group size. However, when groups become too large, individuals will not have enough time available to service all possible social relationships and group cohesion is expected to decrease. In this study, we used data from previously published studies to determine how large groups compromise on their grooming time and how ecological, phylogenetic and life history variables affect time invested in grooming (across species as well as within taxa). We used path analysis to analyse direct and indirect (via group size) effects on grooming. We showed that not only is grooming time determined by group size, but it is also affected by dispersal patterns and sex ratio. Furthermore, we found that grooming time is asymptotic when group size exceeds 40 individuals, indicating that time constraints resulting from ecological pressure force individuals to compromise on their grooming time. This was true across species, but a similar effect was also found within taxa. Cognitive constraints and predation pressure strongly affect group sizes and thereby have an indirect effect on primate grooming time. Primates that were found to live in groups larger than predicted by their neocortex size usually suffered from greater predation risk. However, most populations in our analysis were placed well within what we define as their eco-cognitive niche.
We analyze changes in intimate ties in personal community networks. Our data come from interviews conducted a decade apart with 33 Torontonians. There is much turnover in these networks, with only 27% of intimate ties persisting. Durable ties tend to be with intimates who have provided social support, are in frequent telephone contact, or are kin. There was almost complete turnover in the networks of those respondents who got married during the decade. By contrast, the amount of turnover in networks is not associated with whether the respondents had children, moved to a different home, or started/stopped doing paid work during the decade.
Well before the coming of the Internet, strong ties with friends and relatives stretched beyond the neighborhood: the traditional domain of community. Phones, cars and planes allowed people to have contact over substantial distances. But the mere fact that ties stretched over long distances does not tell us the extent to which distance mattered for contact and support in pre-Internet days. Although, scholars have mused about this question, they have not provided empirical evidence. This paper applies multi-level analysis to assess the extent contact and support declines with distance. It shows a marked drop in the frequency of face-to-face contact at about 5 miles. The frequency of contact continues to decrease steadily further away, with substantial declines happening at about 50 and 100 miles. Distance affects telephone contact somewhat differently, with a marked drop only happening at about 100 miles. Distance also has a significant impact on providing tangible support. As our data were gathered in 1978 in the Toronto area of East York, they allow comparisons with how relationships have changed in light of new forms of communication, such as the Internet and mobile phones.