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The Focused Organization of Social Ties
Abstract
Sociologists since Simmel have been interested in social circles as essential features of friendship networks. Although network analysis has been increasingly used to uncover patterns among social relationships, theoretical explanations of these patterns have been inadequate. This paper presents a theory of the social organization of friendship ties. The approach is based upon Homans's concepts of activities, interactions, and sentiments and upon the concept of extra-network foci organizing social activities and interaction. The theory is contrasted with Heider's balance theory. Implications for transitivity, network bridges, and density of personal networks are discussed and presented as propositions. The focus theory is shown to help explain patterns of friendships in the 1965-66 Detroit Area Study. This paper is intended as a step toward the development of integrated theory to explain interrelationships between networks and other aspects of social structure. Implications for data analysis are discussed. Sociologists have long recognized the importance of patterns in networks of relations that connect individuals with each other. Simmel (1955) described modern society as consisting of loosely connected social circles of relationships. Granovetter (1973) has indicated the general significance of these social circles for communication, community organization, and social conflict. Various studies have supported this picture of the essential patterns in social networks, including Moreno's sociometry (1953), Milgram's "small world" experiments (1967), and Kadushin's observations (1966). Unfortunately, the study of social networks has often been carried out without concern for the origins in the larger social context. Most network analysis ends with description and labeling of patterns; and when explanations of patterns are offered, they frequently rely upon inherent tendencies within networks to become consistent, balanced, or transitive. As a consequence of such atheoretical and/or self-contained network theoretical approaches, data are collected and data analysis techniques are devised for
... Andrews, 1993). Networks are developed in foci, where a focus is defined as "a legal, social, physical, or psychological entit [ies] around which joint activities are organized" (Feld, 1981). Foci include work organizations, educational institutions, informal voluntary organizations, or even physical locations such as neighborhoods. ...
... Foci include work organizations, educational institutions, informal voluntary organizations, or even physical locations such as neighborhoods. Foci "may actively bring people together or passively constrain them to interact" (Feld, 1981(Feld, p.1018. When building ties around a few focus, individuals' personal networks with fellow focus members grow in density as many of their social contacts within each focus are also tied to each other (Feld, 1981, Feld, 1982. ...
... Foci "may actively bring people together or passively constrain them to interact" (Feld, 1981(Feld, p.1018. When building ties around a few focus, individuals' personal networks with fellow focus members grow in density as many of their social contacts within each focus are also tied to each other (Feld, 1981, Feld, 1982. Thus, individuals within the same focus are likely to form friendship ties through which they exchange information and support. ...
Cultural industries help build creativity-based economies and stimulate worldwide cultural interchanges, but this process faces constraints. One such constraint is unequal treatment of genders. When female artists export cultural products, they face a “liability of gender”, defined as gender specific difficulties in overcoming the liability of foreignness. Both audiences’ gendered expectations and artists’ lack of information about foreign markets will lower women artists’ probability of successfully exporting cultural products, relative to their male counterparts. Differences in education and social network connections strengthen this effect. To investigate this relation and discover how it can be counteracted, we study Korean artists from 2000 to 2015. We document that female artists have more difficulty exhibiting in foreign galleries than males, yet these negative effects can be mitigated by elite education and by participation in art residency programs. Residency programs help female artists to develop networks from their interactions with female peers, but these benefits erode quickly relative to the benefits of education. These findings help us understand how to create a level playing field across genders in worldwide cultural exchanges and suggest that network building institutions such as the art residency programs can effectively reduce gender inequality.
... Reviewing the empirical studies shows that the interplay of several concepts emerging from different theoretical backgrounds played a critical role in forming a conceptual framework for the structure and dynamics of localized knowledge sourcing. For example, scholars in sociology mostly elaborate on the concepts of norms, status and homophily (e.g., Lazega et al., 2012), social relations (Burt, 1992;Granovetter, 1973), and social contexts (Feld, 1981). Management and transition studies argue that collaboration patterns differ due to fundamental differences across "technological regimes" and sectoral specificities (Breschi et al., 2000;Kogut, 2000;Malerba, 2002;Malerba & Adams, 2013;Pavitt, 1984;Sedita et al. (2021); Simensen & Abbasiharofteh, 2022). ...
... This research gap calls for studies that integrate a behavioral dimension into current frameworks in cluster studies, which can substantially contribute to our understanding of why and how organizations share knowledge (in other words, why and how they create knowledge ties). While evolutionary economic geography emphasizes the critical role of the micro-behavior of agents and its collective impact on uneven geographical patterns of innovative performance (Boschma & Frenken, 2018;Giuliani & Bell, 2005), surprisingly, there has not been much cross-fertilization between cluster studies and behavioral economics (Thaler, 1980;Thaler & Sunstein, 2009;Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, 1981. 1 Clark (2018) underlines the relevance of context for framing behavior. He reviews the behavioral turn in economics and geography, and argues that the embeddedness of a given actor influences decision-making in time and space as well as the nature of decisions. ...
... Second, a new array of studies should investigate what decision biases and under what circumstances affect knowledge sourcing decisions. As a point of departure, behavioral economics identifies and analyzes a set of decision biases and anomalies (Kahneman et al., 1982(Kahneman et al., , 1991Nagel, 1995;Thaler, 1980;Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, 1981. While most biases are identified at the individual and interpersonal levels, empirical studies will show to what extent these biases are at work at the organizational level. ...
The critical importance of knowledge sourcing as learning relationships and its impact on innovation have been widely discussed in the cluster literature. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, inspired by the relational turn in economic geography, this paper reviews the driving forces of relational knowledge sourcing in clusters. Particularly, it discusses the critical factors of inter-organizational knowledge sourcing embedded at node (agency), dyadic (proximity), and structural (network micro-determinants) levels. In doing so, it goes beyond the cluster literature and builds on concepts and evidence in multiple related fields ranging from network science to behavioral studies, to relational inequality theory and evolutionary economic geography. Second, it synthesizes and extends the scholarly debate on knowledge sourcing in clusters by addressing a multilevel perspective. This article raises multiple theoretically informed research questions for future empirical cluster studies and underlines potential implications for cluster and place-based innovation policies.
... Andrews, 1993). Networks are developed in foci, where a focus is defined as "a legal, social, physical, or psychological entit [ies] around which joint activities are organized" (Feld, 1981). Foci include work organizations, educational institutions, informal voluntary organizations, or even physical locations such as neighborhoods. ...
... Foci include work organizations, educational institutions, informal voluntary organizations, or even physical locations such as neighborhoods. Foci "may actively bring people together or passively constrain them to interact" (Feld, 1981(Feld, p.1018. When building ties around a few focus, individuals' personal networks with fellow focus members grow in density as many of their social contacts within each focus are also tied to each other (Feld, 1981, Feld, 1982. ...
... Foci "may actively bring people together or passively constrain them to interact" (Feld, 1981(Feld, p.1018. When building ties around a few focus, individuals' personal networks with fellow focus members grow in density as many of their social contacts within each focus are also tied to each other (Feld, 1981, Feld, 1982. Thus, individuals within the same focus are likely to form friendship ties through which they exchange information and support. ...
... Although there is no optimal solution in one-shot interactions, when the interaction happens more than once, actors can address the challenge by taking turns giving way. They are economically incentivized to practice alternating reciprocity so as to earn and share a better payoff (25,26) (Table 1); in addition, they might see this joint problem as a social focus that gives them a reason to develop exchange relations through iterated interac tions (27,28). Thus, alternating reciprocity may emerge through locally coordinated interactions in response to the challenge of possible collisions. ...
... However, such collective understand ings could break down when morality-free intelligent assistance is involved in social coordination (17). People can change their social value orientation through the presence of machine assistance, espe cially when it decouples the joint problem they face (27,51). ...
... These findings indicate that whether reciprocity emerges or collapses in mixedautonomy coordination situations depends on whether machine intelligence complements or replaces human agency. Moreover, our experiment suggests two non-exclusive mechanisms for intelligent assistance to suppress human reciprocity: i) altering people's inter action structure and economic equilibrium points (56), and ii) decoupling people's sense of a joint problem, thus causing social foci to disappear (27). ...
Forms of both simple and complex machine intelligence are increasingly acting within human groups in order to affect collective outcomes. Considering the nature of collective action problems, however, such involvement could paradoxically and unintentionally suppress existing beneficial social norms in humans, such as those involving cooperation. Here, we test theoretical predictions about such an effect using a unique cyber-physical lab experiment where online participants ( N = 300 in 150 dyads) drive robotic vehicles remotely in a coordination game. We show that autobraking assistance increases human altruism, such as giving way to others, and that communication helps people to make mutual concessions. On the other hand, autosteering assistance completely inhibits the emergence of reciprocity between people in favor of self-interest maximization. The negative social repercussions persist even after the assistance system is deactivated. Furthermore, adding communication capabilities does not relieve this inhibition of reciprocity because people rarely communicate in the presence of autosteering assistance. Our findings suggest that active safety assistance (a form of simple AI support) can alter the dynamics of social coordination between people, including by affecting the trade-off between individual safety and social reciprocity. The difference between autobraking and autosteering assistance appears to relate to whether the assistive technology supports or replaces human agency in social coordination dilemmas. Humans have developed norms of reciprocity to address collective challenges, but such tacit understandings could break down in situations where machine intelligence is involved in human decision-making without having any normative commitments.
... When focusing on the aggregation problem, an alternative to the use of administrative areas is the use of physical features of the landscape, such as larger roads and railroad tracks, as neighborhood dividers. These physical barriers may also function as social dividers, thereby promoting or hindering social interaction (Feld, 1981;R Grannis, 1998), resulting in high within-group sociodemographic homogeneity (Foster & Aaron Hipp, 2011;Lund, 2018). Furthermore, residents may use such physical barriers to help identify their neighborhoods from surrounding areas (Campbell et al., 2009;Rick Grannis, 2009;Lynch, 1971). ...
... In the present study, the micro-areas used were divided by physical barriers such as larger roads. As previously mentioned, these can potentially serve as barriers for social interaction (Feld, 1981;R Grannis, 1998) and may reflect individuals' own perceptions of where known neighborhoods are separated from the surrounding neighborhoods (Campbell et al., 2009;Rick Grannis, 2009;Lynch, 1971). The empirical findings from the present dissertation indicate that the micro-areas were better at detecting important socio-spatial inequalities and potential neighborhood effects compared with administrative areas. ...
... The situation of multiple social focuses exists in multiteam construction project. Afocus is defined as a social, psychological, legal, or physicalentity that serves as a social context for organizing individuals' activities (Feld, 1981). In the context of multiteam construction projects, stakeholder teams can be seen as formally defined social focuses. ...
... In the context of multiteam construction projects, stakeholder teams can be seen as formally defined social focuses. Social foci theory suggest that individuals whose activitiesare organized around the same focus tend to create interpersonal relationships (Feld, 1981). Meanwhile, differentiation is an important feature of MTSs, which generates boundary-enhancing forces that reinforce the division and dissimilarity between sub-teams (DeChurch et al., 2019). ...
... According to structural focus theory (Feld, 1981(Feld, , 2018, social interactions are shaped by shared activities. The expansion and diversification of ties in young adults' personal networks imply increased participation in different social fields that create foci, i.e., bundles of interactions. ...
... Examples of foci include interactions in a school class, a sports club or at work. Ambivalences may arise when these foci are incompatible (Feld, 1981), i.e., when alters from different foci pressure ego (the focal actor) to foreground the role ego plays in the different foci, creating interpersonal role conflict (Merton, 1968), or when foci are closed and constrained and involve involuntary interactions (Sarazin, 2021). For example, when close individuals no longer have the freedom to negotiate their own interactions, friends of friends may start to dislike each other (Sarazin, 2021). ...
Although negative ties may cause stress and harm well-being, they are also considered fundamental in close and ongoing relationships. This study distinguishes positive, negative, and-when characterized by both valences-ambivalent ties. Analyzing almost 10,000 personal networks from the Swiss CH-X study shows that: (1) ambivalence among family members is more prevalent than among non-family members, (2) ambivalent family dyads or triads are not negatively associated with well-being, and (3) certain balanced family triads are associated with higher well-being and an unbalanced non-family triad is associated with lower well-being. These results suggest that conflicts are not necessarily detrimental to young adults' well-being.
... Social networks exhibit diverse and dense substructures which significantly impact contagion dynamics [14,15]. These networks often feature clustering, crucial in complex contagion models for behavior spreading, where repeated exposure increases behavior adoption likelihood [16,17]. ...
... Social networks, known for their complex, dense local structures, significantly differ from treelike topologies, especially in disease-spreading scenarios [25]. This complexity is due to high clustering in social units like families and workplaces [14,15,23,26], leading to the need for novel tools to understand cliques' effects on spreading processes [16,26]. We aim to investigate the sole effect of social groups on contact tracing, ignoring other salient social network features such as degree heterogeneity or homophily [9,10]. ...
Contact tracing, the practice of isolating individuals who have been in contact with infected individuals, is an effective and practical way of containing disease spread. Here we show that this strategy is particularly effective in the presence of social groups: Once the disease enters a group, contact tracing not only cuts direct infection paths but can also pre-emptively quarantine group members such that it will cut indirect spreading routes. We show these results by using a deliberately stylized model that allows us to isolate the effect of contact tracing within the clique structure of the network where the contagion is spreading. This will enable us to derive mean-field approximations and epidemic thresholds to demonstrate the efficiency of contact tracing in social networks with small groups. This analysis shows that contact tracing in networks with groups is more efficient the larger the groups are. We show how these results can be understood by approximating the combination of disease spreading and contact tracing with a complex contagion process where every failed infection attempt will lead to a lower infection probability in the following attempts. Our results illustrate how contact tracing in real-world settings can be more efficient than predicted by models that treat the system as fully mixed or the network structure as locally treelike.
... Peng et al., 2016). Drawing upon social capital theory, researches suggested that social relations facilitate firms to access external resources that are beneficial for firm's performance (Feld, 1981;Tilly, 2015). Extant researches mainly indicate that social relations positively influence the performance of new venture (H. ...
... Theory New Venture's Social Relations. Social relations represented as informal, interpersonal social connections between the focal firm's top managers and their external actors (Feld, 1981) which are based on trust and shared values between each other ( (Tilly, 2015). Scholars classified the type of social relations mainly as business relations (connections with business actors) and political relations (connections with government officials) (Luo et al., 2012). ...
Plain Language Summary
Social Relations, Legitimacy Acquisition, Symbolic Strategy and Firm Performance
Purpose: The study aimed to understand how social relations impact the performance of new ventures in China, emphasizing the roles of legitimacy acquisition and symbolic strategies. Methods: Through a survey of 242 small and medium-sized enterprises in strategic emerging industries in China, the study examined how legitimacy acquisition mediates the effect of social relations on venture performance, and how symbolic strategies moderate this mediation. Conclusions: It was found that legitimacy acquisition significantly mediates the link between social relations and venture performance. Symbolic strategies, however, had a mixed effect: enhancing the positive impact of political relations on legitimacy acquisition, but diminishing the effect of business relations. Implications: The results suggest that new ventures can improve their performance by gaining legitimacy through social relations. However, employing symbolic strategies may have varied effects depending on the nature of the social relations. Limitations: The study is bound to China, limiting generalizability. Other potential mediators or moderators impacting the relationship between social relations and venture performance were not explored. Additionally, the detailed impact of political versus business relations on legitimacy acquisition was not fully examined.
... Correlation thus heavily impacts connection patterns, complicating the measurement of connection preferences because preferences measured in a given dimension might be caused by connection tendencies in another [33,18,16]. We control for attribute correlation by explicitly considering the population distribution in our interaction model, which in turn controls for the pool of opportunities to meet people from different groups [20,11]. ...
Our multidimensional identities determine how we interact with each other, shaping social networks through group-based connection preferences. While interactions along single dimensions have been extensively studied, the dynamics driving multidimensional connection preferences remain largely unexplored. In this work, we develop a network model of multidimensional social interactions to tackle two crucial questions: What is the structure of our latent connection preferences, and how do we integrate information from our multidimensional identities to connect with others? To answer these questions, we systematically model different latent preference structures and preference aggregation mechanisms. Then, we compare them using Bayesian model selection by fitting empirical data from high school friendship networks. We find that a simple latent preference model consistently outperforms more complex alternatives. The calibrated model provides robust measures of latent connection preferences in real-world networks, bringing insights into how one- and multidimensional groups interact. Finally, we develop natural operationalizations of dimension salience, revealing which aspects of identity are most relevant for individuals when forming connections.
... However, the relative social obligation of maintaining significant social ties (Feld, 1981) may cause complex relational patterns such as problematic and ambivalent social ties (de Bel et al., 2021). In this case, significant social ties may not be easily changed or regulated as they interfere with growth and support (family ties) or interfere with social desirability and sense of belonging (friendship ties). ...
Research highlights the positive impact of social connectedness on subjective well-being. In this paper, we test a model in which an identity-based mechanism links a structural form of connectedness (significant social ties) with two psychological well-being outcomes, life satisfaction and self-esteem. Using data from the LIVES Longitudinal Lausanne Youth Study (LIVES-LOLYS, N = 422), a longitudinal mediation path model tests direct and indirect effects, via the strength of social identification, of the number of significant social ties in two life domains (friends and family) on life satisfaction and self-esteem. Results showed positive associations between the number of significant ties and social identification in the concordant domain, empirically linking the structural and subjective forms of social connectedness. Moreover, our model displays significant indirect effects in the friend domain, but not in the family domain. Having more friends as significant social ties predicted higher social identification with friends, and this was longitudinally associated with higher life satisfaction and self-esteem. Findings show a new mechanism linking structural and subjective forms of social connectedness, unpacking their concerted impact in protecting well-being. The differences between the friend and family domains are discussed in the framework of both life-course and social identity perspectives.
... Accordingly, the impact of the school context has been theorized in two ways. The ethnic composition of schools affects ethnic homogeneity either via varying opportunities for contact (Blau 1977;Feld 1981) or by activating or strengthening preferences for intraethnic ties. For example, on the basis of ethnic competition theory (Blalock 1967), it has been argued that ethnic groups of large and similar size are particularly likely to lead to threat perceptions and conflict (Moody 2001;Mouw and Entwisle 2006;Currarini, Jackson, and Pin 2010;Smith et al. 2016). ...
... Although Skvoretz et al. (2004) use tracing-process ideas in deriving their conditional specification, it should be noted that this scheme marks a conceptual shift from an emphasis on biases as factors that impact the rate at which new nodes are visited in a tracing process to bias events as generators of social ties (rather like the foci of Feld (1981)). It also represents a shift towards an explicitly probabilistic approach to inference: Skvoretz et al. propose to use the conditional specification to perform maximum pseudolikelihood inference (MPLE) for biased net parameters from observed data, in similar fashion to the use of MPLE for ERGMs (Strauss and Ikeda, 1990). ...
The biased net paradigm was the first general and empirically tractable scheme for parameterizing complex patterns of dependence in networks, expressing deviations from uniform random graph structure in terms of latent ``bias events,'' whose realizations enhance reciprocity, transitivity, or other structural features. Subsequent developments have introduced local specifications of biased nets, which reduce the need for approximations required in early specifications based on tracing processes. Here, we show that while one such specification leads to inconsistencies, a closely related Markovian specification both evades these difficulties and can be extended to incorporate new types of effects. We introduce the notion of inhibitory bias events, with satiation as an example, which are useful for avoiding degeneracies that can arise from closure bias terms. Although our approach does not lead to a computable likelihood, we provide a strategy for approximate Bayesian inference using random forest prevision. We demonstrate our approach on a network of friendship ties among college students, recapitulating a relationship between the sibling bias and tie strength posited in earlier work by Fararo.
... A baseline proposition in this tradition is that individuals differ in their access to social capital and that this is partly explained by structural factors (Lin, 2000). Researchers have noted the important role of focused activity in network formation, and such activity can be seen as an opportunity structure where actors can form new ties (Feld, 1981). For adolescents, school is the most important meeting context and findings show that more than half of the strong friendship ties for this group are school friends (Kruse, 2017), making school composition vital for understanding inequality in social capital. ...
Research in several advanced economies has found that the descendants of immigrants tend to experience persistent difficulties in entering the labour market. This article tests whether social capital contributes to the disadvantage of descendants of immigrants in the school-to-work transition when compared to their native-background peers in Sweden. The study uses the CILS4EU survey, which provides information on friendship ties measured at age 15 and labour market outcomes at age 19. This allows for an analysis of networks formed before labour market entrance, an extensive control setup, and a comparison of measures of outgoing, incoming, and reciprocated friendship ties. The results show that the descendants of immigrants have access to less social capital measured as employed friends, but that they are as likely as natives to use their contacts to obtain a job. The returns to social capital are similar in terms of unemployment risk, but descendants of immigrants have a lower payoff when it comes to earnings. The study concludes that social capital contributes to, but is not the main driver of their labour market disadvantage in the school-to-work transition.
... Although this network exists, we can not directly observe it, perhaps because these agents declined to complete a network survey. Instead, we can only observe these agents' memberships in groups (e.g., attending events together, belonging to the same club, etc.), which are driven at least in part by their unobserved network ties (Feld, 1981;Schaefer et al., 2022;Neal, 2023). The example in Fig. 1 illustrates four different observed groups. ...
Collecting network data directly from network members can be challenging. One alternative involves inferring a network from observed groups, for example, inferring a network of scientific collaboration from researchers’ observed paper authorships. In this paper, I explore when an unobserved undirected network of interest can accurately be inferred from observed groups. The analysis uses simulations to experimentally manipulate the structure of the unobserved network to be inferred, the number of groups observed, the extent to which the observed groups correspond to cliques in the unobserved network, and the method used to draw inferences. I find that when a small number of groups are observed, an unobserved network can be accurately inferred using a simple unweighted two-mode projection, provided that each group’s membership closely corresponds to a clique in the unobserved network. In contrast, when a large number of groups are observed, an unobserved network can be accurately inferred using a statistical backbone extraction model, even if the groups’ memberships are mostly random. These findings offer guidance for researchers seeking to indirectly measure a network of interest using observations of groups.
... In dem Zusammenhang nimmt er Bezug auf Felds Fokustheorie (vgl. Feld, 1981). Dementsprechend finden "fokussierte" Aneignungen konkreter sozialer Orte statt. ...
In dem Beitrag wird mit Hilfe des Begriffs der ‚sozialen Topographien‘ dafür plädiert, die sozialräumlichen Zusammenhänge und Einbettungen bei der Analyse von biographischen Bildungsprozessen systematisch zu berücksichtigen. Dabei wird zwischen der Auseinandersetzung mit der Positionierung im gesellschaftlichen Raum sozialer Ungleichheiten und der Konstitution von Zugehörigkeiten zu spezifischen, partiellen Sozialräumen unterschieden. Die bildungstheoretischen Überlegungen werden mit Hilfe einer empirischen Studie konkretisiert, in der Bildungswege von jungen Erwachsenen mit Kinder- und Jugendhilfeerfahrung untersucht wurden. Das Aufwachsen in stationären Betreuungseinrichtungen ist von sozialräumlichen Diskontinuitäten geprägt, während der primäre Bildungsort ‚Familie‘ als prekär erlebt wird. Eine sozialtopographische Perspektive erscheint für diese Gruppe daher in besonderer Weise relevant.
... The general idea is that criminal opportunity is formed through social relations. Social relations do not happen at random but often abey the laws of social an geographic distance [64]. The closer people live, the more daily activity people have in common, the less social distance between them. ...
The interplay between (criminal) organizations and (law enforcement) disruption strategies is critical in criminology and social network analysis. Like legitimate businesses, criminal enterprises thrive by fulfilling specific demands and navigating their unique challenges, including balancing operational visibility and security. This study aims at comprehending criminal networks' internal dynamics, resilience to law enforcement interventions, and robustness to changes in external conditions. Using a model based on evolutionary game theory, we analyze these networks as collaborative assemblies of roles, considering expected costs, potential benefits, and the certainty of expected outcomes. Here, we show that criminal organizations exhibit strong hysteresis effects, with increased resilience and robustness once established, challenging the effectiveness of traditional law enforcement strategies focused on deterrence through increased punishment. The hysteresis effect defines optimal thresholds for the formation or dissolution of criminal organisation. Our findings indicate that interventions of similar magnitude can lead to vastly different outcomes depending on the existing state of criminality. This result suggests that the relationship between stricter punishment and its deterrent effect on organized crime is complex and sometimes non-linear. Furthermore, we demonstrate that network structure, specifically interconnectedness (link density) and assortativity of specialized skills, significantly influences the formation and stability of criminal organizations, underscoring the importance of considering social connections and the accessibility of roles in combating organized crime. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of the systemic nature of criminal behavior from an evolutionary perspective and highlight the need for adaptive, strategic approaches in policy-making and law enforcement to disrupt criminal networks effectively.
... Theories of propinquity suggest that individuals are more likely to interact with others who are physically near (Blau, 1977). Building on this concept, social scientists suggest that many interactions are centralized around the workplace, school, clubs, and associations (Feld, 1981), where structured encounters and availability lead to closeness and provision of support (Small, 2009;Small & Sukhu, 2016). Chronic illness and disability may increase the need to rely on proximate ties for support because these conditions may impact one's ability to maintain relationships (Thoits, 2011), leading to network instability (Newsom & Schulz, 1996). ...
Substantial research has focused on how social networks help individuals navigate the illness experience. Sociologists have begun to theorize beyond the binary of strong and weak social network ties (e.g., compartmental, elastic, and disposable ties), citing the social, economic, and health conditions that shape their formation. However, limited research has employed mixed social network methods, which we argue is especially critical for examining the “non-traditional” social support networks of marginalized individuals. We employ quantitative social network methods (i.e., the egocentric network approach) in addition to in-depth interviews and observations, with a novel tool for capturing network data about social groups, to surface these kinds of supportive relationships. Using the case of “nameless ties”—non-kin, non-provider ties who were unidentifiable by given name or were grouped by context or activity rather than individually distinguished—we show how mixed social network methods can illuminate supporters who are commonly overlooked when only using traditional social network analysis. We conclude with a proposal for mixed methods and group alter approaches to successfully observe liminal support ties that is ideal for research about individuals experiencing chronic disability, poverty, housing insecurity, and other forms of social marginalization.
... More specifically, the structural hypothesis was previously raised to understand how we can incorporate critical sociological factors such as time-space relations, technological and transport in human relations, inequalities, conflict, or social exclusion, to name a few examples (Crossley, 2008: 266). Which, in general, also assumes that there are intermediary focuses of activities or social circles that might or might not intersect (Feld, 1981(Feld, , 1982 or considering that some social categories facilitate or make more difficult social relationships (Blau, 1977). Ideas that were already addressed in the original contributions of de Sola Pool andKochen (1978[1958]) (e.g., geographic distances, occupations) or Milgram (1967) (e.g., female contacting to other females more often and male contacting also more often other males, and people contacting more often acquaintances and friends instead of relatives). ...
In this following comment, we present some criticisms that were made before in the social networks field that might help develop the field of computational social science. For this, we illustrate our argument considering the usage of social networks in the Population-Scale Network Analysis (POPNET) project through the presentation of Frank Takes at the 7th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2). The main argument is that more attention should be given to the theoretical assumptions to motivate, refine and explore more profound relevant research questions of interest to social scientists. We comment on using small-world research to identify how different research questions can be further explored.
... To frame this study, we draw on research about the formation of social ties from sociology (Blau, 1977;Feld, 1981;Fuhse & Gondal, 2022;Granovetter, 1973;N. Lin, 2007). ...
Developing and maintaining connections and relations with others, or what we refer to as the formation of social ties, may strengthen medical students’ sense of belonging in medical school. Social ties play a particularly important role for women medical students as the medical field remains largely dominated by masculine norms. However, forming social ties remains challenging for women in medicine. This study used the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how women medical students navigated the spatial contexts of medical school to form social ties. Using longitudinal qualitative research and narrative inquiry, it describes how 17 women medical students formed social ties during the early stages of COVID-19. Beginning in fall 2020, during the first two-years of medical school, the participants 1) described how personal social ties were deterred from forming in early experiences of medical school; 2) shared experiences that promoted a sense of community bonding during middle and later periods; and 3) expressed limitations of access to the formation of professional social ties throughout their first two-years. This study has important implications for understanding ways spatial contexts, access to physical connections, and the mental and emotional spaces play roles in social tie formation for women medical students and how longitudinal qualitative research can narrate these changes through time.
... A personal (or egocentric) network is defined as the set of social contacts ("alters" in network analysis terminology) known to a focal individual (the "ego"), and the ties among them (McCarty et al., 2019). Personal networks form around recurrent social contexts or foci of interaction (Feld, 1981) -such as family life, work, the neighborhood, or places of worshipand comprise concentric layers of varying tie strength (Roberts et al., 2009): from the core network of the closest and most intimate ties, to the active layer of the people with whom the ego interacts on a regular basis, to the extended set of weak ties known by name but only seen occasionally. Ego-networks are also characterized by complex structures of connectivity among the ego's contacts, such as patterns of clustering in cohesive subgroups and varying levels of node centrality (McCarty, 2002;Vacca, 2020). ...
Relationships between family members from different generations have long been described as a source of solidarity and support in aging populations and, more recently, as a potential risk factor for COVID-19 contagion. Personal or egocentric network research offers a powerful kit of conceptual and methodological tools to study these relationships, but this has not yet been employed to its full potential in the literature. We investigate the heterogeneity, social integration, and individual correlates of intergenerational relationships in old age analyzing highly granular data on the personal networks of 230 older adults (2747 social ties) from a local survey in one of the areas of the world at the forefront of global aging trends (northern Italy). Using information on different layers in broad egocentric networks and on the structure of connectivity among the social contacts of aging people, we propose multiple conceptualizations and measures of intergenerational connectedness. Results show that intergenerational relationships are strongly integrated, but also highly diverse and variable, in older adults’ social networks. Different types of intergenerational ties exist in different network layers, with various relational roles, degrees of tie strength, and patterns of association with individual and tie characteristics. We discuss how new and existing personal network data can be leveraged to consider novel questions and hypotheses about intergenerational relationships in contemporary aging families.
... For the purpose of this paper, probabilistic encounters between team members represented homophilous interaction preferences. However, the same encounters can also be seen as a manifestation of underlying social foci that structure team deliberation (Feld 1981). Translating the insights of this paper to such a perspective implies that better decisions will be made in settings where team members are structurally guided to interact with similar over dissimilar others more frequently. ...
... regions or neighborhoods) and social contexts (e.g. workplaces or sports clubs) may affect meeting opportunities too (Feld 1981;Van Bavel 2021). Furthermore, since union formation is not an individual but a mutual decision that requires both parties' agreement, women's and men's preferences, and two-sided matching mechanisms influence educational sorting outcomes in the final stage of the partner search process (Van Bavel 2021). ...
This study examines within-and cross-country trends and differences in marital sorting by education in Europe. Unlike previous research on assortative mating, our study focuses on the outcomes of the partner search process. We investigate how variations in (a) structural opportunities (educational composition of potential partners) and (b) assortative mating (non-random matching by education) have shaped trends and differences in educational sorting outcomes. Using vital statistics data on all marriages contracted from 2000 to 2020 in Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Italy, we decompose trends and differences in educational sorting outcomes into these two components. Within countries, trends in educational homogamy and hypogamy have been stable or increasing while hypergamy has declined. However, the drivers of these trends varied across countries. For example, in Sweden, shifts in assortative mating and structural opportunities led to more marriages between equally educated spouses, while in Italy, the rise in homogamy stems solely from changes in assortative mating. Within each year, homogamy and heterogamy levels varied between countries. Our findings demonstrate that these cross-country differences can be primarily attributed to variations in assortative mating rather than in opportunity structures. This study adds to recent research studying the structural causes of trends in sorting outcomes.
... Additional concepts developed in social network research provide explanations for how relationships are formed, maintained or lost (cf. Rivera et al., 2010); examples include balance theory (Davis, 1967), the concept of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960), focus of activities (Feld, 1981) and homophily (McPherson et al., 2001). As several contributions in this issue show, these concepts can fruitfully be combined with life course concepts, such as timing, transitions and turning points. ...
Social network research is well-equipped to help life course scholars produce a deeper and more nuanced approach to the principle of “linked lives,” one of the cornerstones of the field. In this issue on Networked Lives, nine original articles and two commentaries generate new theories, empirical findings and methodological applications at the intersection of the fields of social networks and life course research. In this introduction, we reflect on these advances, highlighting key findings and challenges that await scholars in building more robust synergy between the two fields. Social networks emerge as key structural forces in life courses, yet there is much to learn about the mechanisms through which their effects on people’s lives come about. There is a need to study further how networks evolve through the rhythm of life events, and to analyze broader and more complex networks that capture the roles and influences of relations beyond intimate or family ties. These papers demonstrate that there is much to be gained in probing how individuals are linked to and unlinked from others over time, and in carrying conceptual and methodological advances across social network and life course studies.
... In some cases, platforms facilitate topicspecific gathering activities, around which individuals organise social relations. These are local foci defined as "social, psychological, legal or physical entity around which joint activities are organized" (Feld, 1981) (Szulanski, 2003), in the sense that it is very much tied to a specific person. Unless that person makes the effort of codifying her tacit knowledge, physical exchanges are key to knowledge transmission, since "tacit knowledge can be acquired only through shared experience, such as spending time together or living in the same environment" (Nonaka et al., 2000, p. 9). ...
While a significant body of research examines how offline social enterprises scale social impact, research on scaling in the case of digital social innovations is limited. This is an important issue to address because digital social enterprises have different resources at their disposal, which may facilitate or hinder various scaling strategies used by social enterprises. Distinguishing between three scaling strategies (scaling out, scaling up, scaling deep), we develop indicators to account for scaling in digital social enterprises. Using these indicators, we carry out a clustering analysis on a dataset composed of 189 civic engagement platforms in Europe. Our research reveals three types of platforms in terms of their scaling orientations, which are grassroots, technology provision, and data-based.
How do social and stylistic relations in cultural fields coevolve under changing contextual conditions? Artistic communities cohere through collaborations and shared stylistic orientations among artists, but little is known about the structure and interplay of these relational processes. The authors contribute to previous studies by conducting a large-scale investigation of social and stylistic networks among Hollywood filmmakers. In particular, the authors examine how the interplay between artists’ collaborations and shared references changed throughout Hollywood’s history. Using data from the Internet Movie Database and applying relational hyperevent models, the authors analyze the coevolution of collaboration and reference networks among 15,553 Hollywood film professionals who participated in 6,800 films between 1930 and 1999. The authors complement prior sociological efforts through a longitudinal perspective on the structure of social and stylistic networks across three meaningful historical periods: before, during, and after Hollywood’s artistic transformation in the 1960s. The findings show that filmmakers are more likely to collaborate if they previously used the same references, but they are less likely to adopt the references of their previous collaborators. In addition, the results highlight that the structure of relational processes in cultural fields varies over time as the contextual conditions for tie formation change.
Despite being a central topic, current theories of motivation in sociology remain underdeveloped. This paper supplements existing sociological theories on motivation with insights from affective and cognitive neuroscience to address this issue. The resulting sociological affective model of motivation treats affect as an independent force that sometimes coordinates with cognition while taking charge at other times. Drawing on recent work in the neuroscience of motivation and reward, the paper shows how two affective mechanisms—wanting and liking—can shed light on various behavioral outcomes of interest while allowing for sharper theorizing of key distinctions that need clarification in the literature. By examining the distinctive contribution of each process, the paper reveals a proactive, desire‐driven agent often overlooked by prevailing sociological models emphasizing a reactive actor responding creatively and deliberately when internal meanings and external cues are incongruent. The paper concludes by outlining the broader implications of this synthetic affective model of motivation for sociology.
This article examines the relationship between cultural participation patterns and access to social resources, proxied by the position generator tool. In addition, it asks to what extent social networks are class-homogeneous (closed) depending on the configuration of cultural practices. The survey results show that participation in highbrow culture is a more relevant predictor of access to higher prestige contacts than participation in popular culture. Both styles are related with the general volume of contacts and the heterogeneity of social resources. Moreover, the analysis indicates that the structure of social capital (i.e., the proportion of contacts with upper-, middle-, and lower-class members) is connected with pursuing different cultural profiles. The effect of network homogeneity is stronger for highbrow style than for any other style. The results are interpreted in terms of social closure and the role that culture plays in monopolizing access to social resources and maintaining social boundaries.
This study aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19 on loneliness among rural older women in senior cohousing in Korea. Using a natural experimental study design, we investigated how the pandemic-induced closure of cohousing affected the former residents' loneliness. The sample comprised 84 cohousing residents and 51 individuals in conventional homes. The dependent variable is loneliness, and the independent variables include housing transition, social contact, and support from neighbors and friends. Our findings from fixed effect regression models showed former cohousing residents were less likely to experience loneliness when they had more contact with their friends and neighbors, while negative relationships exacerbated feelings of loneliness. Sharing meals and participating in activities with friends and neighbors in cohousing helped the residents develop effective coping strategies. Senior cohousing in rural areas has the potential to strengthen social ties and protect the most vulnerable subgroup of older adults from social isolation and loneliness.
Internet-based social networking services (ISNS) like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others have revolutionized the way people connect, enabling interactions across great distances. This has sparked a debate about the impact of ISNS use on face-to-face contact, particularly within neighbourhoods. Some argue that ISNS diminish the significance of local physical place and hinder meaningful interactions, especially among neighbours. Conversely, others view ISNS as tools that foster new forms of connectedness and enhance relationships within neighbourhoods by creating opportunities to engage with existing peers. However, there is a significant knowledge gap regarding the varying effects of ISNS on offline social interaction within neighbourhoods. Do different ISNS, including messenger services, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and neighbourhood-specific social networks (e.g.nebenan.de), 1 have distinct effects on offline social interaction within neighbourhoods? Are there differences in usage between native residents and migrants? We analyse data from a 2022 postal survey conducted in two German cities (Essen and Cologne), involving 2, 676 residents in 166 neighbourhoods. The results from our multiple linear regression model show that the impact of different ISNS on social interactions varies. Messenger services and neighbourhood-specific social networks have a positive impact on social interactions within the neighbourhood. However, popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter do not significantly affect social interactions within the neighbourhood. Additionally, individuals from the native population do have more social interaction with their neighbours compared to those with a migration background.
Extended social networks encompass both weak and strong ties to provide social support and resources. Hence, it is important to study what explains variation in these networks. This paper addresses this and examines the size and ethnic homogeneity of extended social networks, and group differences therein, and it aims to explain these differences based on a preference–opportunities approach through a decomposition analysis. We apply state‐of‐the‐art NSUM methods to measure the extended networks for different ethnic‐majority and minoritized groups, also considering migrant generation differences, in the Netherlands. Results show that group differences in network size reflect first‐generation minority citizens having smaller networks and majority citizens having more ethnically homogeneous networks. More positive out‐group attitudes among the Moroccan– and Turkish–Dutch partly explain why these groups have less homogeneous networks than Dutch majority members. Differences in the ethnic composition of neighbourhoods also contribute to explaining the homogeneity gap between Dutch majority and Turkish‐Dutch.
How do migrant social networks matter for performance in the job? We examine this by constructing a nationality-based network of foreign newcomers when they first begin to play in the PGA TOUR and examine the impact of this initial social network on newcomers’ probability of surviving (i.e., keeping their license) at the end of their inaugural PGA TOUR season. We find that the migrant social network matters among the non-elite group of players in the second tier of the PGA TOUR, but not among the elite group of players in the first tier of the PGA TOUR. For the second-tier tour players, we find that density of connections within a nationality cluster has a sizable positive effect on newcomers’ probability of surviving, but no evidence that the centrality of a nationality cluster in the overall PGA TOUR network has an impact on survival.
Existing research has documented various determinants of mental health related to individuals’ social connections, but less is known about the role of the structural features of interpersonal networks. This is especially true in the case of bridging, which refers to ties to people who are otherwise disconnected from each other. By intersecting theories of social networks and gerontology, this study employs within- and between-person analysis with data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) to examine the association between social network bridging and depression in later life. The study finds that bridging, particularly between kin and non-kin members in the network, is associated with increased depressive symptoms in later life. This association is contingent on social support and strain respondents experienced, and it exhibits variations within individuals over time, especially among older adults in the youngest age cohort (57–64 years old included in NSHAP in 2005). In closing, the paper discusses the extent to which heterogeneous network structures may be one mechanism that shapes mental health trajectories in the context of later life-course experiences.
Brokerage in intra-organizational networks is critical to performance, but women exhibit less brokerage in their social networks and receive lower performance returns to the brokerage they exhibit than men do. We uncover a condition under which the gender gaps in network advantage are entirely negated: mobility. When women move between units of the organization, they increase their brokerage more than mobile men do. Further, such mobility eliminates the gender gap in returns to brokerage. Using a rich dataset including the personnel records, monthly performance, and email communications of thousands of employees in a large financial institution, we find support for our arguments by comparing the networks and objective performance of those who changed jobs with matched non-movers prior to and following each job change. In probing why this might be the case, we find that women movers are more likely to maintain communication ties to colleagues from their previous roles and that these persistent ties give them a discernible and gender-role-congruent explanation for connecting otherwise disconnected units and benefiting from network brokerage. Our results illuminate important mechanisms by which social network dynamics and mobility affect gender inequality and performance in organizations.
The COVID-19 pandemic, with millions of Americans compelled to stay home and work remotely, presented an opportunity to explore the dynamics of social relationships in a predominantly remote world. Using the 1972–2022 General Social Surveys, we found that the pandemic significantly disrupted the patterns of social gatherings with family, friends, and neighbors but only momentarily. Drawing from the nationwide ego-network surveys of 41,033 Americans from 2020 to 2022, we found that the size and composition of core networks remained stable, although political homophily increased among nonkin relationships compared to previous surveys between 1985 and 2016. Critically, heightened remote communication during the initial phase of the pandemic was associated with increased interaction with the same partisans, although political homophily decreased during the later phase of the pandemic when in-person contacts increased. These results underscore the crucial role of social institutions and social gatherings in promoting spontaneous encounters with diverse political backgrounds.
Zentrale Aufgaben von Kommunen in Deutschland umfassen die Gewährleistung der Daseinsvorsorge, des öffentlichen Verkehrs, Wirtschaftsförderung, Zugang zu ausreichender Breitbandinfrastruktur, gesundheitliche und soziale Betreuung und Zugang zu kulturellem Leben. Kommunen in ländlichen Regionen stehen gleichzeitig vor zahlreichen gesellschaftlichen, wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und politischen Herausforderungen. Neuartige Ansätze und innovative Akteure und Netzwerke werden daher im Kontext der Schaffung von sozialen oder digitalen Innovationen von den Kommunen als Antwort auf diese Herausforderungen begrüßt, stoßen aber auch teilweise auf Barrieren.
In dem Sammelband wird von den Herausgebenden die Frage untersucht, wie sich digitale Vorreiter:innen, die wir „Digitale Pioniere“ nennen, in ländlichen Regionen vernetzen, um einen positiven Beitrag zur ländlichen Regionalentwicklung zu leisten. Dabei liegt der Fokus hauptsächlich auf der kommunalpolitischen Ebene und auf der Frage, wie Digitale Pioniere als Schlüsselakteure in der ländlichen Governance agieren. Die Forschungsergebnisse kommunaler Governance sind anhand ländlicher Untersuchungsteilregionen in Baden-Württemberg und Mecklenburg-Vorpommern im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts „DigPion – Digitale Pioniere in der ländlichen Regionalentwicklung“ (2020–2023) erarbeitet worden. Abschließend wird überprüft, wie die Erkenntnisse und erarbeiteten Handlungsempfehlungen für das Bundesland Brandenburg zu übertragen sind.
This paper examines bias toward status-similarity in adult friendships in Detroit and a West German city. Principles of meeting
and “mating,” by which strangers are converted to acquaintances and acquaintances to friends, are stated. One of these, the
proximity principle, claims that the more similar people are, the more likely they will meet and become friends. This principle
is tested in matrices of friendship choice for twelve social characteristics. Two statistical measures of bias are used (odds
ratio and marginal ratio) and their properties discussed. Compared to a random-choice model, adult friendships show strong
bias toward status similarity for all social characteristics. Bias is strongest for “edge” categories of ranked statuses and
for “best” friends. The less similar two people are in social characteristics, the less likely they are to be close friends.
Demographic characteristics tend to show more bias toward homogeneous choices than other characteristics. These findings are
explained and further analyses of adult friendship structure and dynamics are discussed.
Networks of several distinct types of social tie are aggregated by a dual model that partitions a population while simultaneously identifying patterns of relations. Concepts and algorithms are demonstrated in five case studies involving up to 100 persons and up to eight types of tie, over as many as 15 time periods. In each case the model identifies a concrete social structure. Role and position concepts are then identified and interpreted in terms of these new models of concrete social structure. Part II, to be published in the May issue of this Journal (Boorman and White 1976), will show how the operational meaning of role structures in small populations can be generated from the sociometric blockmodels of Part I.
Systematic inequalities among interdependent places are described here as a dimension of stratification of persons and organizations. The "stratification of places" is compared with the classic dimensions of class and status as a basis of collective action, and it is argued that the competition of places is a significant cause of the territorial differentiation of human communities. This is an essay on the process of spatial differentiation of human communities. I argue that the differentiation of places implies sets of advantages and disadvantages for persons who are tied to each place and thus affects the chances for individual upward or downward mobility. A common response to this fact is a continuing collective effort to influence the pattern of development among places through political action. Places with early advantages, by making full political use of their superior resources, can potentially reinforce their relative position within the system of places. I hypothesize therefore that spatial differentiation tends to be transformed over time into an increasingly rigid stratification of places. The study of the development of systems of places found its classical formulation in human ecology. By emphasizing the stratification aspect of spatial differentiation I am proposing a reorientation toward a more political human ecology, with spatial differentiation seen not only as the population's natural selective response to its habitat but also as a means of organizing inequality.
Balance theory, a theoretical system developed by Cartwright and Harary to formalize concepts set forth by Heider, is used with slight modifications to restate fifty-six sociological and social-psychological propositions from the writings of Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee; Coleman; Davis; Durkheim; Festinger; Fiedler; Homans; Katz and Lazarsfeld; Lazarsfeld and Merton; Lipset, Trow, and Coleman; Merton and Kitt; and Stouffer et al. The propositions are grouped under (a) Person, Other, and X, (b) group structure, (c) changes in attitudes and opinions, and (d) values.
Current theories of cognitive development in children and those of structure in small-scale social systems when jointly considered suggest that the social organization of children's peer groups will demonstrate developmental trends. This inference is tested by measuring transitive organization in 118 positive affect sociograms of children's classroom groups and regressing these measurements on an age variable and other variables associated with the sociometric data. The analyses indicate that a statistically significant positive association exists between transitive organization and age and that this association is independent of variation in choices, made and received per group member, pair proportions, group size or sex composition.
Social structure is conceptualized as the distributions of a population among social positions in a multidimensional space of positions. This quantitative conception of social structure is the basis for a deductive theory of the macrostructure of social associations in society. The likelihood that people engage in intergroup associations under specifiable structural conditions can bededuced from analaytic propositions about structural properties without any assumption about sociopsychological dispositions to establish intergroup associations, indeed, on the assumption that people prefer ingroup relations. Group size governs the probability of intergroup relations, a fact that has paradoxical implications for discrimination by a majority against a minority. Inequality impedes and heterogeneity promotes intergroup relations. The major structural condition that governs intergroup relations is the degree of connection of parameters. Intersecting parameters exert structural constraints to participate in interg...
INTRODUCES THE CONCEPT OF CLUSTERABILITY OR DIVISION INTO GROUPS INTO STRUCTURAL BALANCE THEORY. 2 THEOREMS ARE PROPOSED: (1) A SIGNED GRAPH IS CLUSTERABLE IF AND ONLY IF IT CONTAINS NO CYCLE WITH EXACTLY 1 NEGATIVE LINE, AND (2) A COMPLETE GRAPH IS CLUSTERABLE IF NONE OF ITS 3 CYCLES HAS A SINGLE NEGATIVE LINE. COMPARISON OF THEOREMS LED TO NOTIONS OF LATENT, STRAINED, REINFORCED, AND FREE SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The authors focus on developing standardized measures for models of structure in interpersonal relations. A theorem is presented which yields expectations and variances for measures based on triads. Random models for these measures are discussed and the procedure is carried out for a model of a partial order. This model contains as special cases a number of previously suggested models, including the structural balance model of Cartwright and Harary, Davis's clustering model, and the ranked-clusters model of Davis and Leinhardt. In an illustrative exmaple, eight sociograms are analyzed and the general model is compared with the special case of ranked clusters.
Social circles have indirect interaction, a common interest on the part of the members and are instituted to a relatively low degree. Originally described by Georg Simmel, social circles have not been given major attention by American sociologists. Here a latent class model is used to find a circle of "Friends and Supporters of Psychotherapy" among applicants to psychiatric clinics. Because they are not formally structured, social circles fit the key assumption of latent structures--that certain characteristics will be more common among members than among non-members of a group, but distributed at random within each group. The items characteristic of members of the Friends are: knowing others in therapy, knowing others with similar problems, asking friends for a referral, and telling friends one is applying to a clinic. In addition, items indicating cultural sophistication--going to plays, concerts, cocktail parties and museums--define another social circle which intersects with the Friends. All these items meet the three defining criteria of social circles. The usefulness of the concept is shown by the fact that the way members of the Friends decide to enter therapy is different at every stage of the decision from the way non-members do so. Personal influence is thus seen as exerted not by single persons but by social circles.