Structural embeddedness and stability of interpersonal relations

SOCIAL NETWORKS ELSEVIER

Social Networks 19 (1997) 91-95

Structural embeddedness and stability of interpersonal relations 1 Scott L. Feld Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA

Abstract The amount of structural embeddedness of a tie between two individuals is defined as the extent of overlap of social relations between those two individuals, and presumably reflects the extent of shared foci of activity that bring these individuals together with the same others. It is suggested that, in comparison with other strengths of ties (e.g. strengths of feelings, and frequencies of interactions), structural embeddedness: (1) is less under individuals' control, and therefore (2) tends to be more stable. Analyses of data on the relationships among male students at one small liberal arts college in November and April of their first year in college support the expectation that structural embeddedness is relatively stable, and tends to have some effect on other strengths of ties as well as the continuity of relationships. Keywords: Social networks; Personal relationships; Social structure; Change over time; Foci of activity

1. Introduction T h e c o m p o s i t i o n o f personal n e t w o r k s at any t i m e reflects the histories o f i n v o l v e ments o f individuals in contexts and relationships o f the past. T o the extent that ' s t r o n g ' ties are those ties that are f a v o r e d by social structure a n d / o r individual preferences, strong ties are m o r e likely to persist o v e r time. Studies o f interpersonal relations generally focus attention on the pairwise relationships t h e m s e l v e s , and l o o k for strengths in the feelings and interactions b e t w e e n the individuals. T h o s e strengths are m o s t m e a n i n g f u l to the individuals, because they are the strengths that the individuals m o s t directly experience. H o w e v e r , relations b e t w e e n p e o p l e i n v o l v e m o r e than their direct interactions with one another; p e o p l e and their relationships are affected by the friends o f their friends as

J I would like to thank David Morgan, Jill Suitor, and Barry Wellman for their helpful comments on earlier drafts; and I gratefully acknowledge the Louisiana Population Data Center for providingpartial funding for the coding of the data. 0378-8733/96/$15.00 Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII S 0 3 7 8 - 8 7 3 3 ( 9 6 ) 0 0 2 9 3 - 6

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well as by the friends themselves. Even two people who do not directly interact with one another at all but share many interactions with others may be said to have a 'strong' relationship in a particular respect. They share experiences with and influence from the others, and they may influence one another through their shared interpersonal environments.

2. Structural embeddedness The 'structural embeddedness' of a relationship between two individuals is defined as the extent to which these individuals relate to the same others (Wellman, 1982). As Granovetter (1985) suggests, the nature and extent of structural embedding provides a context for much of the interaction that takes place. Structural embeddedness presumably arises from sharing one or more foci of activity with one another, and thereby developing common relationships with others from those activities (Feld, 1981). Pairs of individuals may also create activities that they share with common friends, and so (deliberately or incidentally) create their own embedding that provide a context for and support for their own relationships. In either case, shared interpersonal environments have various consequences, including supporting the continuity of the pairwise relationships. For understanding stability and change in social networks, I suggest that structural embeddedness has two important properties. (1) It is less under the control of the individuals than other properties of the relationship, and (2) it tends to be more stable than other properties of relationships. The relative lack of individual control can be seen by considering what is involved in increasing or decreasing the structural embeddedness of a tie. Since structural embeddedness involves patterns of activities including others as well as the tied individuals, changing whole sets of relations with others is more difficult and consequential than changing the liking or fiequency of interaction within a relationship. To increase the structural embeddedness, each individual may become associated with foci of activity already including the other, a n d / o r both may join or develop foci of activity together. In either case, individuals change whole sets of activities and relationships. To reduce structural embeddedness, one individual or the other might need to remove him/herself from entire social systems; e.g. quit a job, leave a neighborhood, a n d / o r cutoff ties with the family. Such extreme actions have consequences that go far beyond a particular relationship. These same structural determinants of embeddedness tend to make the extent of overlap of social relations relatively stable. Even as people change the particular individuals they like or dislike and change their frequencies of interactions, the general sets of people with whom they are involved tend to remain the same. For example, while particular co-worker relations may warm or cool fairly often, it is less common for individuals to suddenly withdraw from the set of co-worker relations altogether. The sets may change gradually over time, and may even make major changes, particularly at times of important life transitions (e.g. entry into a school or a job, or divorce - see

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Suitor and Keeton, 1997; Morgan et al., 1997; Wellman et al., 1997), but these large consequential changes are relatively infrequent.

3. The data

Walter Wallace's study of student culture allows some analysis of structural embeddedness (Wallace, 1966). Among other things, Wallace collected data on the interactions and liking among the 152 male first year students at one small college at two points in time (November and April). As would be expected, there was great variation in the extent of common relations shared by pairs of boys. In this context, the variation presumably reflected important aspects of the organization of their lives - they lived near some people, went to classes with others, and shared clubs and fraternities with still others. The students at Midwest College were given a roster of all of the students at the college, including the 152 first year boys. Each student was asked to indicate which other students they recognized; and among those recognized, they were asked to indicate how much time they spent with that person each week, and how much they liked the person. Time together was indicated in hours, ranging from none to over 100 h (as for roommates). Liking was indicated by a choice among five alternatives: (5) like a lot, (4) like, (3) neutral, (2) dislike, and (1) dislike a lot. The response rates were very high, 91% at Time 1, and 84% at Time 2. Granovetter (1973) suggested that structural embeddedness would be closely associated with various strengths of relationships. In fact, the basic argument in the "Strength of weak ties" is that weak ties imply less overlapping networks than strong ties. While it is well known that people who know and interact with one another tend to know more people in common than total strangers, there is little evidence on whether people with 'stronger' relationships tend to know more people in common than people with 'weaker' relationships. In this paper, I consider structural embeddedness itself as a type of 'strength' of a relationship. I examine the relationship between tie strength as indicated by time spent together and liking and interpersonal structural embeddedness, look at the stability of each of these types of tie strength, and see whether stronger ties are more likely to persist than weaker ties. I include those relationships that a respondent reported to involve some amount of time together in November or in April, and specifically look at the stability and change of these relationships over time.

4. Specific measures and their distributions

The measures of strengths and continuity of ties are: HOURS1, HOURS2 - hours spent together each week; LIKE1, LIKE2 - liking of the other person; COUNT1, COUNT2 - structural embeddedness, number of others reporting relationships with both;

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Table 1 Descriptive information for each variable HOURS1 LIKE1 COUNT 1 HOURS2 LIKE2 COUNT2 CONT

Mean

SD

n

6. i 3.9 16.5 4.8 3.9 19.5 0.54

10.3 0.9 8.1 7.6 0.9 8.3 0.50

5345 5361 5345 5393 5408 5393 5345

Note that these statistics do not describe all the same pairs at both points in time. A tie that is mentioned at Time 1 and not at Time 2 has missing data for HOURS2, LIKE2, and COUNT2; and a tie that is mentioned at Time 2 and not at Time 1 has missing data for HOURS1, LIKEI, COUNTI, and CONT.

C O N T - for relationships reported at T i m e 1, this variable indicates whether ( I ) or not (0) the relationship was reported again at T i m e 2. T a b l e 1 shows the m e a n s and standard deviations o f these measures, and the n u m b e r s o f cases (ordered pairs o f individuals) on w h i c h they w e r e based. T h e distribution o f C O N T indicates a fairly large a m o u n t o f change in relationships o v e r time. O n l y 54% o f the originally reported relationships were reported again at the second time. T h e variation in continuity allows determination o f the extent to which strengths o f ties are related to continuity. Table 2 s h o w s the correlations a m o n g the various strengths o f ties, and their correlations with continuation o v e r time ( C O N T ) . In particular, it s h o w s that each type o f strength tends to slightly increase the likelihood o f continuity o f relationships, and that structural e m b e d d e d n e s s is as important as the other strengths. A second issue is the extent to which each o f these strengths are t h e m s e l v e s stable o v e r time: O b v i o u s l y , the stability o f strengths is only m e a n i n g f u l for those relationships that are reported at both points in time. The correlations in Table 2 s h o w a relatively high level o f c o n s i s t e n c y o f strength a m o n g those relationships that continued, and that structural e m b e d d e d n e s s is the m o s t persistent characteristic o f ties. T h e relative stability

Table 2 Associations among the various strengths of ties at Time 1 and Time 2 and continuing at Time 2 HOURS 1 LIKE1 COUNT1 HOURS2 LIKE2 COUNT2 CONT

HOURS1

LIKE1

COUNT1

HOURS2

LIKE2

COUNT2

1.00 0.19 0.10 0.53 0.13 0.06 0.11

0.19 1.00 0.19 0.16 0.45 0.17 0.18

0.10 0.19 1.00 0.05 0.22 0.76 0.13

0.53 0.16 0.05 1.00 0.19 0.09 a

0. i 3 0.45 0.22 0.19 1.00 0.22 a

0.06 0.17 0.76 0.09 0.22 1.00 a

a Note that CONT has a value of 1 for all ties that continued at Time 2, and hence has no variation among those ties that have values for HOURS2, LIKE2, and COUNT2. Note that the ns for these correlations vary for different pairs of variables, but are all over 5000.

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of structural embeddedness gives it great potential for influencing more volatile aspects of relationships. A third issue is the interrelations among the various strengths of relationships. Table 2 shows that the pattern of correlations among the various strengths of ties is similar at each point in time. The various strengths are somewhat related to one another. Liking is more related to the other two strengths than they are related to one another. Structural embeddedness seems to have some effect on liking; structural embeddedness at Time 1 is slightly more highly related to liking at Time 2 than it was to liking at Time 1, while liking at Time 1 is slightly less related to structural embeddedness at Time 2. This is consistent with the stated expectations for stability and change; it is easier to change liking to be consistent with structural embeddedness than to change structural embeddedness to be consistent with liking. Although structural embeddedness could also be expected to facilitate time spent together, these data do not support this expectation; time spent together did not become more related to structural embeddedness over time.

5. Discussion The findings of this study support the expectation that stronger ties tend to persist. However, the strengths of ties themselves are volatile, at least in the context of male college students in their first year of college. Nevertheless, structural embeddedness is the most stable of the various strengths of ties during this period and seems to exert some small influence on liking (but not time spent together) over time. In conclusion, the relative stability of structural embeddedness and its potential for influence of other aspects of relationships as well as its more direct effect on influence and shared experiences make it an important subject of interpersonal relationships for further investigation.

References Feld, S.L., 1981, The focused organization of social ties, American Journal of Sociology 86, 1015-1035. Granovetter, M.S., 1973, The strength of weak ties, American Journal of Sociology 78, 1360-1380. Granovetter, M.S., 1985, Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness, American Journal of Sociology 91,481-510. Morgan, D.L., M.B. Neal and P. Carder, 1997, The stability of core and peripheral networks over time, Social Networks, this issue. Suitor, J. and S. Keeton, 1997, Once a friend, always a friend? Effects of homophily on women's support networks across a decade, Social Networks, this issue. Wallace, W.L., 1966, Student culture: social structure and continuity in a liberal arts college (Aldine). Wellman, B., 1982, Studying personal communities, in: P.V. Marsden and N. Lin, eds., Social structure and network analysis (Sage). Wellman, B., R.Y.-L. Wong, D. Tindall and N. Nazer, 1997, A decade of network change: turnover, persistence, and stability in personal communities, Social Networks, this issue.