Theoretical and Empirical Investigations of the Dynamics of Homophily and its Impact on Students' Achievement, Decisions, and Well-Being

人们更有可能与自己这样的人互动。有一个词可以用来描述这一点，那就是“同形”；在这种情况下，人们的社会关系是有偏见的。这种同质性影响着人们的信息来源、机会、行为和支持。因此，同性恋可能会产生重要的社会影响。这个项目将使用博弈论和数据分析来研究同质性及其后果。数据部分将跟踪社会关系随时间的演变，主要是在学校环境中。该项目将研究(I)当学生在特定环境中花费更多时间时，同质性是如何演变和变化的，以及(Ii)追踪这种同质性对学生的心理健康、成绩以及关于选课和学习领域的决定的影响。该团队还将使用数学技术来建立(I)友谊和同源模式如何随着时间的推移而演变的模型，以及(Ii)同源和社交学习如何帮助和阻碍人们了解特定决策的潜在好处的模型。这些结果将帮助我们了解社会互动如何帮助和阻碍学生和更广泛的社会。该项目将提供新的数据、事实、模型和对同质性动态演变的理解，它在不同特征之间有何不同，以及它如何依赖于风险厌恶和同理心等特征。这包括关于友谊和学习伙伴网络如何在学生中发展的工作。该团队计划使用关于学生互动模式、感知幸福感、压力水平和学业成就的数据来测试因果假设。这一新理论将聚焦于网络的形成和同源异构体随时间的演变。第一个新模型将区分代理人容易观察到的特征，如性别和种族，以及其他需要反复互动才能观察到的特征，如特定的人格特征。第二个模型将举例说明同质性的影响。它将考虑人们如何根据从朋友那里学到的信息做出决定。该团队希望确定同质性是否会加剧羊群行为，以及如何加剧羊群行为，不同群体的羊群行为是否会不同，以及群体是否会相互排挤。其他工作将集中在个人做出的选择的效率和多样性如何取决于同质性的水平，一个群体在不同行动中的能力的多样性，以及各种行动的风险。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

People are more likely to interact with individuals like themselves. One word to describe this is ‘homophily’; when this is the case, people have biased social connections. This homophily affects people’s sources of information, opportunities, behaviors, and support. As a result, homophily may have important social effects. This project will use game theory and data analysis to study homophily and its consequences. The data portion will track the evolution of social connections over time, primarily in school settings. The project will examine (i) how homophily evolves and changes as students spend more time in a given setting and (ii) trace the impact of that homophily on students’ psychological well-being, achievements, and decisions about course selection and fields of study. The team will also use mathematical techniques to build modes of (i) how friendships and homophily patterns evolve over time and (ii) models of how homophily and social learning help and hinder people in learning about the potential benefits of specific decisions. The results will help us learn how social interactions aid and hinder both students and the broader society.The project will provide new data, facts, models, and understandings of the dynamic evolution of homophily, how it differs across traits, and how it depends on traits such as risk aversion and empathy. This includes work on how friendship and study partner networks evolve among students. The team plans to test causal hypotheses using data on student interaction patterns, perceived well-being, stress levels, and academic achievement. The new theory will focus on network formation and the evolution of homophily over time. The first new model will differentiate between characteristics that are easily observed by agents, such as gender and ethnicity, and other that take repeated interactions to observe, such as specific personality characteristics. The second model will example the impact of homophily. It will consider how people make decisions based on information that they learn from friends’ experiences. The team wants to determine whether and how homophily exacerbates herding behavior, whether herding behavior can differ across groups, and whether groups can crowd each other out. Additional work will focus on how the efficiency and diversity of choices made by individuals depends on the level of homophily, the diversity of a group’s aptitudes across actions, and the riskiness of the various actions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.