An Experimental Study of Homophily in the Adoption of Health Behavior

How does the composition of a population affect the adoption of health behaviors and innovations? Homophily—similarity of social contacts—can increase dyadic-level influence, but it can also force less healthy individuals to interact primarily with one another, thereby excluding them from interactio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2011-12, Vol.334 (6060), p.1269-1272
Main Author: Centola, Damon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Body Mass Index
Diet Records
Experimentation
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Health Behavior
Health education
Humans
Innovation
Instrument panels
Internet
Interpersonal Relations
Learning
Male
Middle Aged
Miscellaneous
Neighborhood conditions
Neighborhoods
Obesity
Peer Group
Personality traits
Population characteristics
Psychology and medicine
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social Behavior
Social Networking
Social networks
Social psychology
Social Support
Social Support Groups
Statistics, Nonparametric
Taxa
Young Adult
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Summary:How does the composition of a population affect the adoption of health behaviors and innovations? Homophily—similarity of social contacts—can increase dyadic-level influence, but it can also force less healthy individuals to interact primarily with one another, thereby excluding them from interactions with healthier, more influential, early adopters. As a result, an important network-level effect of homophily is that the people who are most in need of a health innovation may be among the least likely to adopt it. Despite the importance of this thesis, confounding factors in observational data have made it difficult to test empirically. We report results from a controlled experimental study on the spread of a health innovation through fixed social networks in which the level of homophily was independently varied. We found that homophily significantly increased overall adoption of a new health behavior, especially among those most in need of it.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1207055