Psychology, Agency and Network Structure: the Relationship between Individual Predispositions, Structural Holes and Network Closure

Social network research seldom considers the possible effect of individual psychological differences on network structures. We propose several hypotheses about how individual differences might predispose actors to structure their immediate social environment in terms of seeking network closure or a preparedness to sustain structural holes. To investigate these hypotheses, we introduce a new method of examining personal networks of strong and weak ties through a triad census. We collected egocentric networks from 125 first year psychology students and correlated the triad census results with a number of extensively researched psychological instruments. The triad census data reduces to three principal components, each of which describes central aspects of strength-of-weakties and structural holes theories. We find that psychological predispositions predict a small but significant proportion of the variance in each of these components. People who see themselves at the mercy of external forces tend to live in closed networks of weak connections. People who seek to keep their strong tie partners apart, and thereby bridge structural holes, tend to be individualists, to believe that they control the events in their lives, and to have higher levels of neuroticism. People with strong network closure and “weak” structural holes (the pattern predicted from the “strength of weak ties”) tend to be less individualist and more group oriented, with their social identity important to the way they see themselves and the world.