“Birds of a feather stock together.” Is this true? According to academic research, it seems like the old saying is true.
According to McPherson et al (2001), homophily is the principle that a contact between similar people is more likely to happen than among dissimilar people. His article gives a good insight into past studies on homophily, and the key aspects of homophily. He claims that a lot of academic research shows that the patterns of homophily are highly robust over various types of relations, including friendship.
Lazarsfeld and Merton (1954) distinguished two types of homophily. One is status homophily, which is related to similarity in ascribed status like race, ethnicity, sex, or age, and acquired status like religion, education, occupation, and behaviour patterns. Value homophily is based on internal states such as values, attitudes, and beliefs. McPherson (2001) recognizes all these factors as salient dimensions of homophily.
Where does homophily come from? Most scholars agree on the significance of homophily as mentioned above, but they have different explanations for the origin of homophily (Brashears, 2008). One is structural homophily, which explains that individuals happen to be surrounded with those who are similar by structural processes. For example, as many people make friends in their workplace and as occupation is closely related to education level, people end up getting along with people who are educationally homogenous. Another explanation is choice homophily, which puts more emphasis on individual choice than on structural factors. It is more difficult to interact with people who do not share common knowledge. Thus, individuals will prefer similarity in their relationships when they are given the opportunity to choose.
The word homophily might seem so simple as to say that similar people get together. However, there are different levels and aspects of homophily. For example, Brashears (2008) looked into how males and females differ in the strength and patterns of homophily in terms of age, religion, and education level. Also, Syed and Juan (2012) explored the degree to which pairs of friends have similar levels of ethnic identity, which they defined as the degree to which individuals identify with their ethnic group.
Homophily plays an important role in forming and reinforcing social structure. Since people tend to interact with those who are like themselves, their experiences within their social positions are reinforced. Homophily implies that cultural, behavioural, genetic, or material information that flows through social networks tend to be localized in sociodemographic space (McPherson, 2001). The phenomenon of homophily itself is indeed interesting, but the roles that it plays in the operation of social systems make it a more interesting topic to study.
Works Cited:
Brashears, M. E. (2008). Gender and homophily: Differences in male and female association in Blau space. Social Science Research, 37, pp.400-415.
Lazarsfeld, P. and Merton, R. Friendship as a social process: a substantive and methodological analysis. In: Berger, M. (Ed.), Freedom and Control in Modern Society. (New York: Van Nostrant, 1954).
McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L. and Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, pp.415-444.
Syed, M. and Juan, M. J. D. (2012) Birds of an ethnic feather? Ethnic identity homophily among college-age friends. Journal of Adolescence, 35, pp.1505-1514.