Social Exchange and Interracial-Solidarity: What Interdependence Structures of Adolescent-Networks Can Lead to the Diversity of Adulthood-Networks?

• In Event: 21011 - Social Psychology in Organizations

Abstract

This study explores what type of friendship experience in adolescence, shaped by school network structures, can lead to one’s openness to racial diversity in adulthood relationships. I suggest a new measure of structural holes that captures power-dependence relations between individuals of heterogeneous social groups and apply them to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Data. The result shows that students who experience strong total power (i.e., mutual dependence) and equal power (i.e., equal dependence) with their peers in school networks are more likely to have racially heterogeneous networks in adulthood, which is strongly in line with social exchange theories proved well in experimental conditions but rarely applied in general social network situations. This implies that not only the frequency (e.g., more contact with racially diverse friends) but also the context (e.g., power; interdependence) of friendship experience in adolescence is important for interracial solidarity.

Author

• Yunsub Lee, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona