The Impact of Weak Ties in Our Lives
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/03a5/1d369617e440ef7004efc641a4b952e61560.pdf
It is widely known that our acquaintances (weak ties) are less likely to be socially involved with one another than are our close friends (strong ties). The overall social structural picture suggested by this argument can be seen by considering the situation of some selected individual-call him Ego. The weak tie between Ego and his acquaintance becomes not a trivial acquaintance tie but rather a crucial bridge between the two close friends (Granovetter).
In the evolution of social systems, the most important source of weak ties is the division of labor, since increasing specialization and interdependence result in a wide variety of specialized role relationships in which one knows only a small segment of the other’s personality. In this article, Granovetter talked about Langloris ‘s studies. Langloris e studied a large sample of men and women in a branch of the Quebec provincial government. He notes that even though this branch had “attempted to formalize the recruitment of its members as much as possible” (p. 217), 42.7 percent of the 2,553 individuals in the sample found their jobs through personal contacts. It is interesting to know that there are so many relationships that are relevant to weak ties. This is also related to what we learned in class. As the strong Triadic Closure Property states, if the node has strong ties to two neighbors, then these neighbors must have at least a weak tie between them. The weak ties are actually embedded in a larger, social network.
However, strong ties have greater motivation to be of assistance and are typically more easily available. One uses weak or strong ties for various purposes depends not only on the number of ties one has at various levels of tie strength but also on the utility of ties of different strength. Thus people for whom weak ties are much more useful than strong ties. In conclusion, it is surprising to learn the relationships and the impacts of weak ties , and how it related to our lives.