Close Friends Think Alike

Ma, Shufeng

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/75835 Copy

Description

Title

Close Friends Think Alike

Author(s)

Ma, Shufeng

Issue Date

2015

Keyword(s)

Educational Psychology

Abstract

Social networking has become an important part of people's life. The type of information each person receives everyday highly depends on what their friends shared. When people are asked to express their opinions on some issues, it is very likely that the way they think is just like their friends. In this picture, the dots represent students and different colors represent different ways of thinking. Independent dots represent those who do not belong to any social network; whereas the dots connected by a curve line indicate these students are friends. If three or more students are connected through direct or indirect friendship, the group is defined as a social cluster. Among the 19 clusters, 9 clusters (blue circle) contain students who have experienced collaborative group work. Students in other clusters had individual seat work. Students who had collaborative group work tend to generate similar ways of thinking. For example, a cluster down the right side (see the enlarged cell plot) contains five students. Each student generated 2-3 different ways of thinking but they shared the same way of thinking with people connected to them. The result suggested that collaboration facilitates transfer of thinking.

Type of Resource

• text
• image

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/75835

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2015 Shufeng Ma

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