Collab-Or-Ate

The WSJ article “Genes and the Friends you Make” reports that genetics play a factor in the structure of your social network, specifically the in-degree, transitivity, and the centrality of your network:

The scientists looked at how many students in the longitudinal study named a given student as a friend, which it termed “in-degree” affinity; how many students a given student named as friends (out-degree affinity); what the odds were of a given student’s friends knowing each other (transitivity); and how central or peripheral to a network a given student might be (centrality).

The researchers found that in-degree, transitivity and centrality are “significantly heritable.” This means that your genetic background may help determine not only how many people count you as a friend, but also how many of your friends are friends among themselves. This sheds light on the kind of social network you inhabit, and whether your presence is central to it, or not.

There are related studies that find that levels of innovation, obesity, smoking and depression can be linked to who you are friends with. If we break apart the causal link between genetics and innovation/obesity/smoking/depression research outcomes, we might find that it isn’t your genes, but rather your genetically pre-determined set of friends that are influencing the course of your life. Better break the genetic determinism by stepping up that Facebook friending!