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The co-evolution of emotional well-being with weak and strong friendship ties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2017

TIMON ELMER ,
ZSÓFIA BODA  and
CHRISTOPH STADTFELD
TIMON ELMER
Affiliation:
Chair of Social Networks, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich, Switzerland (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
ZSÓFIA BODA
Affiliation:
Chair of Social Networks, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich, Switzerland (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
CHRISTOPH STADTFELD
Affiliation:
Chair of Social Networks, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich, Switzerland (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
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Abstract

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Social ties are strongly related to well-being. But what characterizes this relationship? This study investigates social mechanisms explaining how social ties affect well-being through social integration and social influence, and how well-being affects social ties through social selection. We hypothesize that highly integrated individuals–those with more extensive and dense friendship networks–report higher emotional well-being than others. Moreover, emotional well-being should be influenced by the well-being of close friends. Finally, well-being should affect friendship selection when individuals prefer others with higher levels of well-being, and others whose well-being is similar to theirs. We test our hypotheses using longitudinal social network and well-being data of 117 individuals living in a graduate housing community. The application of a novel extension of Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models for ordered networks (ordered SAOMs) allows us to detail and test our hypotheses for weak- and strong-tied friendship networks simultaneously. Results do not support our social integration and social influence hypotheses but provide evidence for selection: individuals with higher emotional well-being tend to have more strong-tied friends, and there are homophily processes regarding emotional well-being in strong-tied networks. Our study highlights the two-directional relationship between social ties and well-being, and demonstrates the importance of considering different tie strengths for various social processes.

Keywords

social networksordered stochastic actor-oriented modelsemotional well-beingwell-beingsocial integrationsocial influencesocial selectionweak ties
Type
Research Article
Information
Network Science , Volume 5 , Special Issue 3: Networks and Health , September 2017 , pp. 278 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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