Colloquium Abstract

Thursday, August 21, 2008 • 3:30 PM • Robert N. Noyce Conference Room, SFI

Matthew O. Jackson Stanford University and SFI External Professor

Homophily, Patterns of Segregation in Social Networks, Behavior and the Speed of Learning

Homophily, the tendency of people to associate with others of similar backgrounds and interests, is quite prevalent in social networks. Social networks that look otherwise similar in terms of their characteristics but have different levels of homophily can lead to very different behaviors in terms of peoples' decisions and beliefs. For example, if people communicate via word-of-mouth then the speed at which they learn depends on the level of homophily in a society. The relationship between homophily and learning speed is nonlinear and nonmonotone: small amounts of homophily actually increase the speed of learning, while large amounts hamper it. I will present some results on how homophily affects behavior and learning, and also present a look at homophily and convergence speeds for networks from the Adolescent Health data set.

Host: Willemien Kets