Open-mindedness predicts racial, political, and socioeconomic diversity of real-world friendship networks
Date
2025-04-03
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Abstract
Even in environments offering ample opportunities to interact with people from diverse backgrounds, people differ in their tendency to form intergroup friendships. Whereas some develop intergroup friendships, others prefer befriending ingroup members, contributing to prejudice and polarization. We identify open-mindedness—an inclination to engage with and understand different perspectives—as an individual difference predicting the racial, political, and socioeconomic diversity of real-world friendship networks. In a longitudinal study of 1,423 eighth–ninth graders, more open-minded adolescents developed more racially diverse friendship networks over 2 years. Two additional studies (total N = 1,585 adults) replicated and extended this finding: Open-mindedness predicted greater racial, political, and socioeconomic diversity of friends, and was more consistently associated with friendship diversity than Big Five openness to experience. The associations between open-mindedness and friendship diversity were partly explained by open-minded individuals’ lower avoidance of interaction with outgroup members. Building open-mindedness may be one individual-level approach to promote friendships across divides.
Description
This is the accepted version of the article that was published in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. The full published version may be found at https://doi.org/10.1177/13684302251324887. This version may be used for non-commercial purposes only and may not be altered or transformed.
Keywords
intergroup friendship, social networks, open-mindedness, diversity, homophily
Citation
Park, Y., Turetsky, K. M., Duckworth, A. L., & Tsukayama, E. (2025). Open-mindedness predicts racial, political, and socioeconomic diversity of real-world friendship networks. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13684302251324887
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41 pages
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 United States
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SAGE Publications
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