How Triadic Closure Affects Friendship
https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/17-psychological-tricks-to-make-people-like-you-immediately
The article is about the psychological tricks that can help make people like you immediately. One way is by copying someone, also known as the mirroring strategy. A study found that people were more likely to say they liked their partner when the partner mimicked their behavior. Two other simple ways to get someone to like you is to compliment them, but not all the time. The theory behind not complimenting all the time is the gain-loss theory. This theory suggests that one’s positive comments will be more effective if one delivers them only occasionally. Another way to trick someone into liking you is by spending more time around them. According to the “mere-exposure effect,” people lean towards things that are familiar to them.
Some of the simple things to do to make people like you on a first impression include being in a great mood, being warm, being competent, letting them talk about themselves, acting like you like them, telling them a secret, and smiling whenever you can. All these little acts have research and theories behind them, which prove that they might seem like a small act, but they go a long way in getting someone to like you. In addition, one can share their shared values. A study by Theodore Newcomb found that if your trying to get friendly with someone finding a point of similarity between the two people and bringing it to light is a great way to get them to like you. Newcomb’s research brought to light the “similarity- attraction effect.”
The article states as the number one of the most critical tricks to get someone to like you on a first impression is to be friends with their friends. The social network theory behind this is the “triadic closure effect.” This effect states that two people are more likely to be closer when they have a friend in common. An example of this effect, the article states, is a program created by students at the University of British Columbia that friended people on Facebook randomly. The study found that people were more likely to accept the friend request as the number of mutual friends with the person increased. The data showed that people were only 20% likely to accept the friend’s request with no mutual, but 80% more likely to accept the request with more than 11 mutual friends.
Therefore, this article applies to what we learned in class because we learned about the triadic closure effect. We learned that “if two people in a social network have a friend in common, then there is an increased likelihood that they will become friends themselves at some point in the future.” One reason that B and C are more likely to become friends is because of the fact they have a common friend A gives the opportunity for B and C to meet. Due to the fact they have this friend in common, there is an increased chance that they will end up meeting and potentially becoming friends. The second reason is because B and C are friends with A, and there is a mutual awareness of this giving them a basis for trusting each other that two people without this common connect might lack. The last reason is based on the incentive that A might have to bring B and C together. If A is friends with both B and C, then it becomes a source of hidden stress in these relationships if B and C are not friends with each other. If B and C are not friends, this could be stressful for A. This is why the triadic closure effect would play a role in two people becoming friends if they have one mutual friend.