Network Churn: The Effects of Self-Monitoring Personality on Brokerage Dynamics
利用荷兰某放射科的纵向友谊数据，研究发现高自我监控者比低自我监控者更容易吸引新朋友并占据新的桥梁位置，且新朋友多为陌生人，从而更高效地增加结构洞。
The apparent stability of social network structures may mask considerable change and adjustment in the ties that make up the structures. In this study, we theorize and test—using longitudinal data on friendship relations from a radiology department located in the Netherlands—the idea that the characteristics of this “network churn” and the resultant brokerage dynamics are traceable to individual differences in self-monitoring personality. High self-monitors were more likely than low self-monitors to attract new friends and to occupy new bridging positions over time. In comparison to low self-monitors, the new friends that high self-monitors attracted tended to be relative strangers, in the sense that they were unconnected with previous friends, came from different functions, and more efficiently increased the number of structural holes in the resultant network. Our study suggests that dispositional forces help shape the dynamic structuring of networks: individuals help (re)create the social network structures they inhabit.