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Purity homophily in social networks.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Dehghani, M; Johnson, K; Hoover, J; Sagi, E; Garten, J; Parmar, NJ; Vaisey, S; Iliev, R; Graham, J
Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. General
March 2016

Does sharing moral values encourage people to connect and form communities? The importance of moral homophily (love of same) has been recognized by social scientists, but the types of moral similarities that drive this phenomenon are still unknown. Using both large-scale, observational social-media analyses and behavioral lab experiments, the authors investigated which types of moral similarities influence tie formations. Analysis of a corpus of over 700,000 tweets revealed that the distance between 2 people in a social-network can be predicted based on differences in the moral purity content-but not other moral content-of their messages. The authors replicated this finding by experimentally manipulating perceived moral difference (Study 2) and similarity (Study 3) in the lab and demonstrating that purity differences play a significant role in social distancing. These results indicate that social network processes reflect moral selection, and both online and offline differences in moral purity concerns are particularly predictive of social distance. This research is an attempt to study morality indirectly using an observational big-data study complemented with 2 confirmatory behavioral experiments carried out using traditional social-psychology methodology.

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Published In

Journal of experimental psychology. General

DOI

EISSN

1939-2222

ISSN

0096-3445

Publication Date

March 2016

Volume

145

Issue

3

Start / End Page

366 / 375

Related Subject Headings

  • Social Networking
  • Psychological Distance
  • Morals
  • Male
  • Humans
  • Female
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Adult
  • 52 Psychology
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
 

Citation

APA
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Dehghani, M., Johnson, K., Hoover, J., Sagi, E., Garten, J., Parmar, N. J., … Graham, J. (2016). Purity homophily in social networks. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 145(3), 366–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000139
Dehghani, Morteza, Kate Johnson, Joe Hoover, Eyal Sagi, Justin Garten, Niki Jitendra Parmar, Stephen Vaisey, Rumen Iliev, and Jesse Graham. “Purity homophily in social networks.Journal of Experimental Psychology. General 145, no. 3 (March 2016): 366–75. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000139.
Dehghani M, Johnson K, Hoover J, Sagi E, Garten J, Parmar NJ, et al. Purity homophily in social networks. Journal of experimental psychology General. 2016 Mar;145(3):366–75.
Dehghani, Morteza, et al. “Purity homophily in social networks.Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, vol. 145, no. 3, Mar. 2016, pp. 366–75. Epmc, doi:10.1037/xge0000139.
Dehghani M, Johnson K, Hoover J, Sagi E, Garten J, Parmar NJ, Vaisey S, Iliev R, Graham J. Purity homophily in social networks. Journal of experimental psychology General. 2016 Mar;145(3):366–375.

Published In

Journal of experimental psychology. General

DOI

EISSN

1939-2222

ISSN

0096-3445

Publication Date

March 2016

Volume

145

Issue

3

Start / End Page

366 / 375

Related Subject Headings

  • Social Networking
  • Psychological Distance
  • Morals
  • Male
  • Humans
  • Female
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Adult
  • 52 Psychology
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences