The Conversion of Cultural Tastes into Social Network Ties

Lewis, Kevin; Kaufman, Jason

doi:10.1086/697525

Cited by 51 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 102 publications

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“…To illustrate, it may be that while one adolescent's frequent religious attendance may not directly influence the attendance of their peers; but by signaling an identity of “highly religious” it may increase their peers’ reported religious salience (or other dimensions). Lewis and Kaufman () make similar claims about how homophilous selection operates not on individual traits, but on clusters of cultural tastes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Early peer influence research has been criticized for focusing too heavily on problem behaviors and negative outcomes, while paying inadequate regard to peer influences on prosocial outcomes (Brechwald and Prinstein 2011). Recent studies have begun to address this limitation and offer evidence of peer influence on a broader set of outcomes, including emotions (van Workum et al 2013), culture (Lewis and Kaufman 2018), and, most important for our purposes, identity (Kornienko et al 2016;Rivas-Drake et al 2017).…”

Section: Network Processes In Adolescent Friendshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent studies have begun to address this limitation and offer evidence of peer influence on a broader set of outcomes, including emotions (van Workum et al. ), culture (Lewis and Kaufman ), and, most important for our purposes, identity (Kornienko et al. ; Rivas‐Drake et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crafting Mosaics: Person‐Centered Religious Influence and Selection in Adolescent Friendships

Adams

Schaefer

Ettekal³

2020

Scientific Study of Religion

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This research addresses the intersection of two key domains of adolescents’ lives: religion and peer networks. Religion scholars argue that religion is multi‐faceted and better understood by focusing on combinations of indicators (i.e., mosaics), versus a variable‐centered approach. We adopt this framework and investigate the interplay between religion and peer networks, both in how religious mosaics are shaped by friends and how religious profiles affect friend selection dynamics. With data from two schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate religious mosaics using latent class analysis (LCA) to identify profiles consisting of combinations of commonly available survey‐based measures of religious attitudes, behaviors, and identities. Finding evidence of theoretically expected profiles, we then use stochastic actor–based models (SABMs) to investigate network dynamics for these LCA‐based religious profiles. We demonstrate how the profile data can be integrated within the SABM framework to evaluate processes of friend selection and influence. Results show evidence of adolescents influencing one another's religious mosaics, but not selecting friends on that basis.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Network Processes In Adolescent Friendshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crafting Mosaics: Person‐Centered Religious Influence and Selection in Adolescent Friendships

Adams

Schaefer

Ettekal³

2020

Scientific Study of Religion

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“…Although, in line with these studies, my Socio-cultural model for friendships does, indeed, show an effect of engagement with group culture on ego's friendship ties, Full socio-cultural models for both friendship and collaboration show no effect of cultural constructs on social ties unless field positions are accounted for. Hence, the recent findings on the effects of cultural worldviews and tastes on 'egocentric' social networks might benefit from additional testing based on 'sociocentric' data (for a similar argument see Lewis and Kaufman, 2018) while accounting for field positions. An alternative explanation is that, unlike concepts and associations freely expressed by group members in the present study, closedended survey questions on cultural worldviews and tastes already impose field positions.…”

Section: Results Of Modeling Are Presented Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ambivalence of cultural homophily: Field positions, semantic similarities, and social network ties in creative collectives

Basov

2020

Poetics

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This paper utilizes a mixture of qualitative, formal, and statistical socio-semantic network analyses to examine how cultural homophily works when field logic meets practice. On the one hand, because individuals in similar field positions are also imposed with similar cultural orientations, cultural homophily reproduces 'objective' field structure in intersubjective social network ties. On the other hand, fields are operative in practice and to accomplish pragmatic goals individuals who occupy different field positions often join in groups, creatively reinterpret the field-imposed cultural orientations, and produce cultural similarities alternative to the position-specific ones. Drawing on these emergent similarities, the cultural homophily mechanism might stimulate social network ties between members who occupy not the same but different field positions, thus contesting fields. I examine this ambivalent role of cultural homophily in two creative collectives, each embracing members positioned closer to the opposite poles of the field of cultural production. I find different types of cultural similarities to affect different types of social network ties within and between the field positions: Similarity of vocabularies stimulates friendship and collaboration ties within positions, thus reproducing the field, while affiliation with the same cultural structures stimulates collaboration ties between positions, thus contesting the field. The latter effect is visible under statistical analysis of ethnographic data, but easy to oversee in qualitative analysis of texts because informants tend to flag conformity to their positions in their explicit statements. This highlights the importance of mixed socio-semantic network analysis, both sensitive to the local context and capable of unveiling the mechanisms underlying the interplay between the cultural and the social.

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“…Goldberg and Stein (2018) show one process by which this abstraction could occur; they suggest that peer influence arises on the basis of "associative diffusion," which is the assessments of similarity between beliefs and behaviors, rather than influence operating on each of those beliefs/behaviors alone. Lewis and Kaufman (2018) demonstrate that bundles of cultural tastes (rather than individual artist/product preferences) similarly provide a means for homophilous selection. We combine these perspectives for application to health research, considering whether and how lifestyle-based bundles of related health behaviors are intertwined with peer network processes.…”

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confidence: 91%

Peer Network Processes in Adolescents' Health Lifestyles

Adams¹,

Lawrence²,

Goode³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Group-based lifestyles offer individuals a lens for making behavioral decisions. But how do lifestyles arise and change? We propose that friendship networks shape lifestyles, while simultaneously being a product of lifestyles. Combining theories of health lifestylesinterrelated health behaviors arising from group-based identities-with network and behavior change, we examined influence and selection processes between friendship networks and health lifestyles. We analyzed two high schools with longitudinal, complete friendship network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Latent class analyses characterized each school's predominant health lifestyles based on several health behavior domains. School-specific stochastic actor-based models (SABMs) evaluated the bidirectional relationship between friendship networks and health lifestyles. Predominant lifestyles remained stable within schools over time, even as individuals transitioned between lifestyles. In both schools, friends displayed more similarity in health lifestyles than other peers, and this similarity resulted primarily from selection, but also from influence processes. Friends exhibit remarkable similarity on a range of characteristics. Research demonstrates this "network assortativity" on characteristics ranging from specific health behaviors like smoking (Haas and Schefer 2014), physical activity (de la Haye, et al. 2011), or alcohol and other substance use (Kirke 2004); to attitudes including political (Bond et al. 2012), and religious beliefs (adams, Schaefer, and Ettekal 2020); to statuses that animate key aspects of sociological research-gender (Kandel 1978), race (Moody 2001), and occupational roles (Chen and Volker 2016). Beyond documenting the ubiquity of these patterns, network research aims to theoretically and empirically disentangle the causal processes responsible for observed assortativity (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001). Frequently, this entails separating processes of peer influence (people adopting the behaviors of their friends) from homophilous selection (choosing friends with similar behaviors; Steglich, Snijders, and Pearson 2010).Here, we raise a new question regarding the basis of network assortativity: What is the nature of the characteristics that matter for how should we conceptualize the characteristics that provide the basis of network influence and selection? Network scholarship has largely focused on accounting for network similarity one attribute at a time. For example, how do our peers influence our smoking behavior? Do I interact more frequently with others who share my own musical preferences? Focusing on modeling the link between networks and single characteristics simplifies methodological strategies (e.g., it is easier to collect data that focus on a single domain at a time, statistical frameworks are more parsimonious, etc.). However, many of the mechanisms underpinning social influence may work equally well for bundles of behaviors as for individual behaviors.Our focus on how...

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The Conversion of Cultural Tastes into Social Network Ties

Cited by 51 publications

References 102 publications

Crafting Mosaics: Person‐Centered Religious Influence and Selection in Adolescent Friendships

Crafting Mosaics: Person‐Centered Religious Influence and Selection in Adolescent Friendships

The ambivalence of cultural homophily: Field positions, semantic similarities, and social network ties in creative collectives

Peer Network Processes in Adolescents' Health Lifestyles

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