Homophily in Personality Enhances Group Success Among Real-Life Friends

Abstract

Personality affects dyadic relations and teamwork, yet its role among groups of friends has been little explored. We examine for the first time whether similarity in personality enhances the effectiveness of real-life friendship groups. Using data from a longitudinal study of a European fraternity (10 male and 15 female groups), we investigate how individual Big Five personality traits were associated with group formation and whether personality homophily related to how successful the groups were over 1 year (N = 147-196). Group success was measured as group performance/identification (adoption of group markers) and as group bonding (using the inclusion-of-other-in-self scale). Results show that individuals' similarity in neuroticism and conscientiousness predicted group formation. Furthermore, personality similarity was associated with group success, even after controlling for individual's own personality. Especially higher group-level similarity in conscientiousness was associated with group performance, and with bonding in male groups.

The Role of Personality Traits and Values in Perceived Friendship Quality: The Dyadic Approach

“…Previous study only shows that matching level of Extraversion leads to positive emotional expressions [17] and that may not be a essential factor of friendship building. Unlike the past study [16], the Synchrony of both Conservation vs. Openness to Change and Self-transcendence vs. Self-enhancement revealed positive relationship with the synchrony of the friendship quality.…”

“…Given that the personality traits were not specified in that study, it is intriguing whether a certain aspect in one's personality could possibly predict the friendship quality. A more recent study also showed similar results that personality similarity was positively correlated with group success, even after controlling for individual's own personality [16], demonstrating the crucial role of personality similarity in the interaction among group members.…”

Structure and function in human and primate social networks: implications for diffusion, network stability and health

“…One complicating aspect of real social networks not usually considered in these models is the fact that social subnetworks are characterized by a high level of homophily, especially in the inner layers. In other words, people's friends tend to resemble them on an array of social and cultural dimensions [118,119,123]. Analysing a large (20 million users) cellphone dataset, Miritello et al [85] differentiated, on the basis of calling patterns, two distinct phenotypes: 'social keepers' who focused their calls on a small, stable cohort of contacts (introverts?)…”

“…Homophily in friendships has also been documented in respect of a number of endogenous traits, including gender [17,24,66,121], ethnicity [122] and personality [85,123]. Gender has a particularly strong effect: approximately 70% of men's social networks consist of men, and approximately 70% of women's networks consist of women, with most of the opposite sex alters in both cases being extended family members.…”

The level and development of university students’ social integration: Personality traits and person-environment fit predict integration with fellow students and teaching staff

“…Uncertainty reduction theory suggests that shared values make interaction partners more predictable, easing communication and supporting friendship formation (Berger and Calabrese 1975). Several empirical studies show that homophily regarding personality traits plays a role in forming new friendships in larger social environments (Bahns et al 2017;Selden and Goodie 2018;Laakasuo et al 2020). University students tend to select friends with similar levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and openness and the perceived similarity in personality traits predicts students' higher friendship intensity (Selfhout et al 2009).…”