Combining Old and New Perspectives on Why “Weak Ties” are so Important
*Please refer to “Important Notes” at the bottom before reading this piece.
Throughout the beginning weeks of class, we covered the differences between strong and weak ties in social networks. In a friendship graph specifically, we learned to label strong ties as a relationship between two nodes that signifies lots of interaction and close friendship, whereas weak ties were signified as relationships between two nodes that indicated less interaction- like that of acquaintances. The article I chose to review includes information about the importance of weak ties- a topic we covered in class. I will first go over the content of the article; I will then go over further applications of this article to classwork. Lastly, I will explore a more sociology-based application of the article that regards our happiness levels in relation to our “ties”, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The article discusses a key concept from our class: weak ties are more beneficial to us than strong ties for receiving new information. Ian Leslie (the author) discusses Granovetter’s research of 282 Boston workers- most of these workers received their jobs through someone they knew. This goes to prove that who you know is so important- perhaps more than what you know. To the surprise of many, though, 84% of these people got their jobs through weak tie relationships- in other words, someone who they only saw occasionally. This actually makes sense, because those in our tight-knit network usually are surrounded by the same information as us. It is our connections with those outside our close groups that have unique information- perhaps information that they received from their own close friends. I will now explore this concept further using ideas from our class textbook.
The textbook explores Granovetter’s findings in terms of some key class concepts such as local bridges and the strong triadic closure property- meaning that mutual friends become friends (or acquaintances) when the ties to each mutual friend are strong. Here is a figure that the textbook provides:
In this example, nodes A and B both have their own set of tight-knit social groups that encompass many strong ties and triadic closure. The relationship between nodes A and B is referred to as a local bridge, meaning that A and B have no friends in common. Deleting the edge between A and B would result in their distance (amount of edges it takes to connect them) being greater than two. An edge is a local bridge when it doesn’t form the side of a triangle in a graph. It has been determined that a local bridge must be a weak tie; If a node A satisfies the Strong Triadic Closure Property and is involved in two strong ties, then any local bridge it’s involved in must be a weak tie. Both the article and textbook explore the benefit of easier access to information from weak ties. We can now explore other benefits that arise from weak ties.
The textbook explores the risk of reputational damage when connecting with a friend in a tight-knit network versus connecting with a friend from a local bridge. For instance, the edge between A and D (known as a relatively highly embedded edge because of its amount of mutual neighbors) is at high risk for reputational sanction. If A wrongs D, their mutual friends C and E are likely to find out too- leading to reputational demise for A. If A and B get into a fight, there is much less pressure because they don’t have mutual friends who will butt in. This connects to a concept explored in the article: the fact that conversations with people we know well come with an emotional burden. “Weak tie conversations are lighter and less demanding”. This very well may be because there is no reputational risk to controversial conversation.
Now, let’s explore the textbook’s discussion of a social network regarding a company (in the context of the figure shown). Nodes A and B have career advancement advantages because they have access to information from many different departments in the company; they have invested their energy into many different groups instead of only one group. This provides more opportunity for creativity regarding combining ideas. The article chosen supports this point (made by the textbook) by using an example about the physical building of Pixar. Steve Jobs determined that the building should have a large central hall that all employees should pass through- this would prompt random conversations with different types of employees, inspiring creativity.
The article further explores sociological effects of weak ties. The author explains how during the COVID-19 pandemic, he strongly misses his choir practices where he interacted with members of choir who were “weak ties” to him. He feels short of friendly and casual conversations. Researcher Sandstrom even proved that those who have more interactions with weak ties experience greater happiness and sense of belonging. It is interesting how both the article and textbook apply the strength of weak ties to happiness, greater access to information, and reputational risk. What’s more, we are all suffering from a lack of interaction with weak ties now due to the COVID-19 pandemic where causal, random interactions are rare.
*Important Notes
Article:
I also made many references to:
Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World: Chapter 3 Strong and Weak Ties; By David Easley and Jon Kleinberg
*I used the terms “the article” and “the textbook” many times throughout my piece. “The article” references the BBC article I used, and “the textbook” references our class textbook. Both sources are shown above.