Social networks affect individuals’ ability to solve conflicts between individual and collective interests. Indeed, the ability to seek out cooperative others is a key explanation for the high levels of cooperation observed in social life. In contrast to existing research on cooperation and networks, sorting in the real world is typically driven by homophily, or similarity on socially significant attributes like ethnicity or religion. Here the authors develop and test an argument about how homophily alters network dynamics and cooperation using a large web-based experiment and an agent-based model. They find that homophily promotes cooperation, net of key determinants of cooperation. Further, homophily drives the selection of new ties, increasing clustering in dynamic networks. The authors also demonstrate the consequences of in-group preferences for between-group segregation. Their results therefore shed light on how cooperation can evolve in networks and how this process contributes to network-level segregation.

中文翻译：

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合作网络中的同质性和隔离性

社交网络影响个人解决个人利益与集体利益冲突的能力。事实上，寻找合作他人的能力是社会生活中观察到的高度合作的关键解释。与现有的合作和网络研究相反，现实世界中的排序通常是由同质性或种族或宗教等社会重要属性的相似性驱动的。在这里，作者使用基于网络的大型实验和基于代理的模型开发并测试了关于同质性如何改变网络动态和合作的论点。他们发现同质性促进了合作，但排除了合作的关键决定因素。此外，同质性推动了新关系的选择，增加了动态网络中的聚类。作者还展示了组内偏好对组间隔离的后果。因此，他们的结果阐明了合作如何在网络中发展以及这一过程如何促进网络级隔离。