homophily

American  

[huh-mof-uh-lee] / həˈmɒf ə li /

noun

1. the tendency to form strong social connections with people who share one’s defining characteristics, as age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, personal beliefs, etc..

   political homophily on social media.

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Other Word Forms

• homophilious adjective

Etymology

Origin of homophily

First recorded in 1950–55; homo- ( def. ) + -phily ( def. )

Example Sentences

The researchers looked at four types of network homophily, race, age, income and education and measured the diversity of respondents' friend groups within these categories on a scale of 0 to 100%, along with life satisfaction levels and feelings about social cohesion.

From Science Daily

Political homophily—love of those who are politically similar—is one of the strongest and best-documented phenomena in social science.

From Scientific American

Until recently, researchers believed that the main principle involved in how we select our social ties has been what the ancient Greeks called homophily, or love of the similar.

From Scientific American

But homophily is not the only driver of this segregation.

From Scientific American

We found that the combination of acrophily and homophily likely leads people to rapidly self-select into more extreme camps.

From Scientific American