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Homophily Research Paper

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Homophily is a term first coined by sociologist in 1950s, it directly translates into “love of oneself”. It is a theory that refers to the tendency of people to associate and build connections with others who are similar to them. Homophily is the fundamental social ongoing principle, a universal law of all social science. In this paper, I am going to demonstrate why, and how this theory can be well-applied to my personal experience. People with different characteristics usually appear to differ in qualities. In addition, we often attribute these qualities according to the categories their membership belong to, especially the important parts (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001). For instances, low-income people are less educated,…show more content…
The three of us have then soon become close friends. Constance is from Malaysia, Jackie is born and raised in the United States while I am from Guangzhou, China. I like to consider myself as someone who is diverse and enjoy the differences. Initially, I really thought I was right about myself before taking a closer look at our friendship. The three of us grew to like each other and build strong connections over time because we have similar opinions regarding different subjects, and share interests in a lot of things. For examples, traveling and playing instruments. As a group, there are quite a lot similarities between us in terms of social characteristics. The three of us are all women, with an age difference less than 3 years. In addition, we are all major in Communication in the same school. According to the extensive research done by McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, greater differences exhibit in social characteristics would result in further distance in social networking (2001). A study conducted last year by University of Leicester and Bocconi University supported McPherson’s statement, researchers found that people would consider the establishment of bond with individuals as an costly investment when they are distanced in characteristics (Currarini et al., 2016) In other words, opposite repeals. However, there’s one big difference between us in terms of social characteristics. Constance and I are Asians growing up in Asian countries while Jackie is white who grew up in in a western country. Race and ethnicity are two major components in the principle of homophily. And yet, the fact that Jackie is of a different race did not make me think of her as any more different than Constance. I then started to think why it didn't matter much in the process of establishing ties in our
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