WEAK SOCIAL TIES: The Benefits of our Weak Social Ties

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During the pandemic, out of concern for the wellbeing of my widowed father, my dog and I would meet up with him at various parks in the city, and we would walk. Every other day. Stroll. From one grassy then snowy corner to another, waving or nodding hello to other masked dog walkers. There was the woman who wore bright colorful masks and walked her 4-year-old beagle, Daisy. And an elderly gentleman, at least as old, if not older, than my father, who walked two schnauzer-like pups whose energy was crazy high and refreshing. And a young pregnant couple, Andi and Terry, who walked without dogs but walked to be with dogs.

While the world was (understandably) grieving for intimate social contact with friends and loved ones, my father and I were making new contacts, weak social ties. Acquaintances with whom we enjoyed the brief conversation about what vet clinic is or is not limiting visitors due to the pandemic or what “no contact take-out” bakery had the best cinnamon rolls. With Andi and Terry, it was about COVID and pregnancy concerns, for which I had a contact with the local health department that I was able to text from 6 feet away, while my father enjoyed showing off his, uhm, my dog, to an older woman he described as “very classy” when passing her the day before. With others still it was the familiar smile and the “hello” from nameless voices that had nevertheless grown familiar and anticipated.

Social networks are a composite of all social ties; all sets of relationships and interactions one has with loved ones, acquaintances, communities, etc. Social support, or the resources (emotional, physical, financial, informational) offered by one’s social network, comprise one’s “Social Capital," a term made popular by French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, in 1986. The term “weak ties,” first explored by Mark Granovetter in his landmark social science research “The Strength of Weak Ties,” refers to social connections that fall somewhere in between close intimate ties and strangers. Granovetter distinguishes strong from weak ties by defining a relationship’s strength as a combination of the amounts of time, emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocity expressed or experienced in a relationship. If one imagines our relational world as concentrical, like the SCRS’s orbits, close intimate friends and family reside on the smaller inner circle where relationships require large investments of time and are described as intimate and reciprocal. The “weak ties” would be the acquaintances that reside on the outer most ring.

"If one imagines our relational world concentrically, like the SCRS’s orbits, close intimate friends and family reside on the smaller inner circle [and] “weak ties” would be the acquaintances that reside on the outer most ring.”

Strongly embedded ties tend to overlap and share resemblances that acquaintances and weak ties do not. In 2018, neuroscience research by Carolyn Parkinson revealed that neural responses or brain activity among graduate students who were friends were strikingly similar across various brain regions responsible for motivation, learning, affect processing, and attention. The data demonstrated decreasing degrees of neural response similarity in proportion to the decreases in tie strength, with “friends of friends of friends” being least similar in brain activity. Parkinson’s research supports the findings of others that people, much like other social animals, associate with those who share similar characteristics such as demographics, personality traits, ethnicity, and behavioral patterns. In short, friends often see the world in similar ways. From an evolutionary perspective, this has had enormous benefit assuring group cooperative interactions that depend, at least in part, on the memory and emotions associated with past interactions.

Career mobility is the area most frequently studied by various social researchers when evaluating the benefits of weak social ties over strong social ties. Most recently, a 2022 study co-conducted by LinkedIn and MIT, using LinkedIn’s “People You May Know algorithm” and measuring intensity of tie strength, sought to explore the value of weak ties in job transmission. “Job transmission” refers to obtaining a job at a company where the weak contact is already employed. The researchers found that weak ties increased job transmission. In fact, job mobility benefited most from moderately weak ties, generally defined as acquaintances, friends of friends, and former co-workers. Diversity is the primary explanation for the benefits of weak social ties. Unlike the homogeneity of strong ties, weak ties commonly observed between acquaintances and strangers are characterized by their diversity; as such they are likely to provide new opportunities or new information, one critical dimension of social capital.

Much of the research investigating wellbeing and social relationships has involved close relationships such as partners and friends. And, consistently, the results have demonstrated that social contact is associated with positive psychological and physical wellbeing. However, a growing body of literature suggests the benefit of weak social ties has been grossly underestimated. Gillian Sandstrom from the University of Essex has been investigating the association of weak social ties and wellbeing for the past decade and reports that individuals with larger networks of weak social ties report greater degrees of happiness than individuals with few weak ties. Her research takes a further leap into the dimension of weak social ties and reveals that conversations or minimal interactions with strangers can be a significant contributor to a person’s knowledge base, subjective wellbeing, and sense of belonging.

Collectively, current neuroscience and social psychology research on social ties suggests that minimal interactions with weak ties and with strangers may potentially increase acts of kindness by improving mood and increasing empathy and gratitude. One pathway in which this may occur is through our neurobiology. Humans and, to a lesser extent other primates, enjoy the release of “feel good” neurotransmitters when engaging in conversations with familiars and with strangers. MaryAnn Raghanti, a biological anthropologist at Kent State, stained sliced sections of basil ganglia from humans and primates with chemicals that react to different endorphin neurotransmitters. The basal ganglia contain nerve cells and fibers in a region at the base of the brain called the striatum which is thought responsible for movement, learning, and social behavior. Compared to other primates, the great apes and humans evidenced the highest levels of the “feel good” endorphins dopamine and serotonin when engaged socially, with dopamine being present in significantly larger amounts with humans than any of the other primates. Bazzara and Zach (2009), investigated the relationship between empathy and oxytocin among brief interactions with strangers. Oxytocin, another feel-good neurotransmitter responsible for emotional attachment, was released nearly twice as often when empathy for a stranger was experienced. Moreover, when oxytocin was released, acts of generosity toward strangers were statistically greater.

The implications of these findings are broad. Psychotherapists and life coaches should encourage their clients to explore their weak social ties just as they would have them explore the quality and quantity of their stronger, more intimate social relationships. Introverts and others less inclined to seek out social interaction with strangers will be aided by cognitive behavioral approaches that correct faulty assumptions about their social desirability and facilitate interactive behavior. Health care providers and medical social workers will appreciate the potential benefits for patients when assisting them in identifying and accessing weak ties that will increase health awareness and encourage healthy behavior.

For all of us, the real-world implications are likely evident in all our day-to-day interactions if we simply listen and pay attention. For example, the weak ties my father and I were creating during the pandemic were associated with moments of gratitude and fondness, both in the giving and receiving of information as well as in the simple act of sharing smiles with others less known and less similar. And many months later, returning to a yoga class that had been closed during the pandemic, was a realization of how much I had taken my existing weak ties for granted. In a spontaneous conversation with a yoga acquaintance, a Zulu exchange student, I shared a bit about the walks my father and I took during those difficult months. He smiled and replied “Ubuntu. I am because we are.”