Social Bubbles

Read the original research article “Ingroup preferences, segregation, and intergroup contact in neighborhoods and civic organizations,” by Kasimir Dederichs, Rob Franken, Dingeman Wiertz, and myself here.

Most people prefer to interact with people of the same age, ethnicity, and education level.

Why do many people live their lives in social bubbles? A new study I conducted together with Kasimir Dederichs, Rob Franken and Dingeman Wiertz shows that most people prefer to interact with people just like themselves. We conducted three large-scale survey experiments in which respondents living in the Netherlands had to choose between neighborhoods they would like to move to and between civic organizations (e.g., sports clubs, cultural associations) they would like to join. The neighborhoods and organizations varied in their social compositions and other variables that matter for these choices such as financial costs, travel time and friendliness. This method elicits more honest responses than simply asking individuals about their tolerance toward people different from themselves.

People consistently choose settings featuring more people of their own ethnicity, age, and educational level.

The only group that did not exhibit these ubiquitous ingroup preferences were people without a college degree. They did not mind interacting with people with higher levels of education.

We were able to quantify the strength of ingroup preferences by looking at the tradeoffs people were willing to make. For example, people under 50 years of age were willing to travel 5 minutes further to join a club where just a quarter of members are over 50 as opposed to a club where half of members are over 50. People of native Dutch origin were willing to travel ten extra minutes for their daily errands if this meant they could live in a neighborhood without any residents with a Turkish or Moroccan background rather than one where a quarter of neighbors have such backgrounds. Not surprisingly, especially the latter result was picked up by the media.

A lack of exposure to people different than oneself makes people more reluctant to come out of their social bubble.

Individuals who were surrounded by more people of their own age, ethnicity, and educational level in their current neighborhood and organizations displayed stronger ingroup preferences. This reflects that people act upon their ingroup preferences. Segregation and ingroup preferences are thereby closely linked and can become a vicious cycle – a cycle worth attempting to break.