Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 11, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-92719-6
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- NSF [SES-1741441]
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- Simons Investigator Award
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Research shows a surprising result that red friends of red nodes in a network tend to be more homophilous than red friends of blue nodes. This phenomenon applies to globally heterophilous and homophilous networks, and is structurally distinct from the Friendship Paradox.
Homophily-the tendency of nodes to connect to others of the same type-is a central issue in the study of networks. Here we take a local view of homophily, defining notions of first-order homophily of a node (its individual tendency to link to similar others) and second-order homophily of a node (the aggregate first-order homophily of its neighbors). Through this view, we find a surprising result for homophily values that applies with only minimal assumptions on the graph topology. It can be phrased most simply as in a graph of red and blue nodes, red friends of red nodes are on average more homophilous than red friends of blue nodes. This gap in averages defies simple intuitive explanations, applies to globally heterophilous and homophilous networks and is reminiscent of but structually distinct from the Friendship Paradox. The existence of this gap suggests intrinsic biases in homophily measurements between groups, and hence is relevant to empirical studies of homophily in networks.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available