The Benefits of Weak Ties
http://www.journalgazette.net/features/20180903/study-even-weak-social-ties-have-benefits
In an article published in The Journal Gazette, Jennifer Breheny Wallance discusses two prominent studies which analyze the connection between weak social ties and a person’s physical and emotional health. In lecture, we learned that in any given social network, weak ties are equally as important as strong ties. If a person has just a few close, intimate relationships, he is likely to have many weak ties, numbering well into the hundreds. Further, if a person A is close friends with person B and person C, there is likely to be a weak tie between person B and person C, which further extends the connectivity of a given network. Wallance’s article serves to emphasize the properties of triadic closure and strong and weak ties. Specifically, Wallance provides evidence to prove the importance of weak ties in our daily lives.
Wallance begins her discussion by first acknowledging the importance of strong ties in a person’s social network. She advocates for intimate relationships with family and close friends, even if it is only possible to maintain a few of these relationships at one time. As Wallance continues, she points out the importance of both strong ties and weak ties to a person’s level of social integration. Social integration, as determined by psychologists, is the level to which an individual engages in each level of relationships. A person with many weak relationships is said to be more socially integrated than a person with just a few strong relationships.
Social integration, in fact, has important implications on physical and emotional health. In one study published in 2014, researchers tracked the interactions of 58 first-year undergraduate students. The study concluded that those students who had the most interactions within a day, whether it be with close friends or distant acquaintances, reported the highest number of happy feelings and the strongest sense of belonging at their new University. In other words, those students who were at a high level of social integration were also at a high level of emotional health. The importance of social integration was again tested in a study recently published by the journal Health Psychology. In this study, researchers analyzed data related to a person’s lung function over a four-year period by comparing the data with the various social roles the person held in his or her life. The study concluded that those who took on many social roles, and therefore formed many weak relationships, exhibited stronger lung function and a generally stronger physical well-being than those who took on just a few roles. Again, there is a clear positive relationship between a person’s physical health and level of social integration.