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It's a difficult effect to do a controlled experiment for because of the way homophily acts as a confounding variable. Anecdotal evidence suggests the effect is
by sskates 15y ago
It's a difficult effect to do a controlled experiment for because of the way homophily acts as a confounding variable. Anecdotal evidence suggests the effect is real though- as Justin said in the article, he didn't actually start riding a motorcycle until he met other people who did.
- disgruntledphd2 15y agoIts doable though. You recruit over a number of years at a college, get them to indicate who their friends are and ask them to fill out some personality questionnaires and demographics. Follow them for their college career, repeating the measures and asking them for their closest friends at each time point (say every month or semester). It would be expensive, but its very achievable. Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence is not particularly useful when dealing with people, given that we tend to reinterpret our pasts based on our presents among other memory biases.