We tested a novel process we term implicit homophily in which perceivers' implicit outgroup bias shapes their affiliative responses toward ingroup targets with outgroup friends as a function of perceived similarity. Across 4 studies, we tested implicit homophily in the context of racial groups. We found that White participants with higher implicit anti-Black bias reported less affiliative respo...

Online social networking is a pervasive but empirically understudied phenomenon. Strong public opinions on its consequences exist but are backed up by little empirical evidence and almost no causally-conclusive, experimental research. The current study tested the psychological effects of posting status updates on Facebook using an experimental design. For one week, participants in the experimen...

JEL Classification: I120, Z130 Twenty-seven percent of the Union Army prisoners captured July 1863 or later died in captivity. At Andersonville the death rate may have been as high as 40 percent. How did men survive such horrific conditions? Using two independent data sets we find that friends had a statistically significant positive effect on survival probabilities and that the closer the ties...

Stress assignment to polysyllabic words is the only aspect of the pronunciation of written Italian that cannot be predicted by rule. It could be a function of stress dominance in the language or of stress neighborhood (i.e., the number of words sharing an ending and a stress pattern). In two experiments, we investigated stress assignment in Italian adult and, most importantly, young readers. Wo...

Scientists debate whether people grow closer to their friends through social networking sites like Facebook, whether those sites displace more meaningful interaction, or whether they simply reflect existing ties. Combining server log analysis and longitudinal surveys of 3,649 Facebook users reporting on relationships with 26,134 friends, we find that communication on the site is associated with...

The present study explored variations in online communication and relationship preferences for friends, family, coworkers, and unknown individuals across gender (men, women), age (young, middle, late), and duration of Internet use (low, medium, high). A total of 174 individuals participated in this study. They were divided into two gender (86 men and 88 women), three age (60 young, 60 middle, a...

So you’ve decided you want to go to the movies with a friend. How will you go about deciding what to see? You’ll probably start by asking a few friends what they have seen. Once you’ve gotten a few opinions, you’ll have to consult the friend accompanying you, who also most likely spoke to several of her friends, to reach a final decision. If there is one particular movie that nearly everyone yo...

We examine the moderating role of friendship and school network characteristics in relationships between 1) youths' friends smoking behavior and youths' own generalized expectancies regarding risk and future orientation and 2) generalized expectancies of youths' friends and youths' own generalized expectancies. We then relate these constructs to smoking. Using a longitudinal sample from the Nat...

JEL Classification: I120, Z130 Twenty-seven percent of the Union Army prisoners captured July 1863 or later died in captivity. At Andersonville the death rate may have been as high as 40 percent. How did men survive such horrific conditions? Using two independent data sets we find that friends had a statistically significant positive effect on survival probabilities and that the closer the ties...

We conducted a propagation analysis on an open social network, i.e., YouTube, by crawling one of its friendship networks and one of its subscribers (followers) networks. Our study is unique because it investigates the two main types of connections (i.e., friends and followers) within the same environment and interaction features. We observed that the effect on propagation of people who are not ...