Mapping the gender and religious dynamics of social ties in a diverse school in India

• In Event: 1-217 - Intergroup Friendships in Cultural Context: Harnessing the Power of Social Network Approaches

Integrative Statement

Because friendships provide powerful inoculators against the development of prejudice, it is critical to understand the factors that promote or prevent cross-group friendships in children. Most past research on this topic has focused on race in North America, but valuable perspective can be gained by broadening our investigation to other contexts. Here we explore the network structure and the factors influencing the likelihood of cross-group friendship in approximately 1300 students in 3rd through 10th grades in a large school in Gujarat, India. In a region with a recent history of violent Hindu-Muslim conflict, this school is rare in its deliberate goal of enrolling similar numbers of Hindu (majority) and Muslim (minority) children, offering an opportunity to study friendship networks along both gender and religious lines. We present data from the first year of a longitudinal project, in which we collected data on children’s friendships (positive ties) and peers that they try to avoid (negative ties). In addition, children completed a number of items on intergroup attitudes, group identification, their perceptions of their school’s norms concerning intergroup interaction, their personal well-being, their religious observances, and their self-reported generous behavior in allocating resources.
Beginning with positive ties, gender homophily (i.e. nominations of same-gender peers) was extremely high, with 95% of social ties within-gender and with 83% of participants reporting no cross-gender ties. There was also substantial religious homophily (77% own-religion ties), though it was somewhat weaker in older children, and 58% of children had at least one cross-religion friendship. Religious homophily was also stronger in boys. Religious attitudes were strongly associated with friendship nominations, and the perception of inclusive school norms was modestly related to nominating more other-religion peers. Overall, Hindu and Muslim students exhibited strong own-religion preferences in attitudes as well as in their hypothetical resource allocations.
Turning to negative ties, these networks were considerably more integrated, with 77% of ties within-gender and 42% within-religion. Boys nominated more other-religion peers than did girls. As with positive ties, religious attitudes predicted nominations, in this case such that those with stronger own-religious favoritism had more other-religion negative ties.
In addition to gender and religion (i.e. group-based) homophily, we observed moderate clustering based on responses to other items, including attitudes, generosity in the hypothetical monetary donations, and religiosity. Thus, the social dynamics of this school exhibited substantial complexity and suggest multiple potential influences on the likelihood of cross-group friendships. In future work we will examine changes in network structure over time, as well as any potential lagged effects of attitudes on friendship or friendship on attitudes across waves of data collection. By comparing these network dynamics to past work on cross-race friendships in the United States and inter-ethnic friendships in Europe, our findings will contribute to conversations about the most reliable predictors of cross-group friendships in childhood.

Authors

• Yarrow Dunham, Yale
  Presenting Author

• Mahesh Srinivasan, UC Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author