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The stability of transient relationships

In contrast to long-term relationships, far less is known about the temporal evolution of transient relationships, although these constitute a substantial fraction of people’s communication networks. Previous literature suggests that ratings of relationship emotional intensity decay gradually until...

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Autores principales: Hidd, Valentín Vergara, López, Eduardo, Centellegher, Simone, Roberts, Sam G. B., Lepri, Bruno, Dunbar, Robin I. M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10104882/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37059731
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32206-2
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author Hidd, Valentín Vergara
López, Eduardo
Centellegher, Simone
Roberts, Sam G. B.
Lepri, Bruno
Dunbar, Robin I. M.
author_facet Hidd, Valentín Vergara
López, Eduardo
Centellegher, Simone
Roberts, Sam G. B.
Lepri, Bruno
Dunbar, Robin I. M.
author_sort Hidd, Valentín Vergara
collection PubMed
description In contrast to long-term relationships, far less is known about the temporal evolution of transient relationships, although these constitute a substantial fraction of people’s communication networks. Previous literature suggests that ratings of relationship emotional intensity decay gradually until the relationship ends. Using mobile phone data from three countries (US, UK, and Italy), we demonstrate that the volume of communication between ego and its transient alters does not display such a systematic decay, instead showing a lack of any dominant trends. This means that the communication volume of egos to groups of similar transient alters is stable. We show that alters with longer lifetimes in ego’s network receive more calls, with the lifetime of the relationship being predictable from call volume within the first few weeks of first contact. This is observed across all three countries, which include samples of egos at different life stages. The relation between early call volume and lifetime is consistent with the suggestion that individuals initially engage with a new alter so as to evaluate their potential as a tie in terms of homophily.
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spelling pubmed-101048822023-04-16 The stability of transient relationships Hidd, Valentín Vergara López, Eduardo Centellegher, Simone Roberts, Sam G. B. Lepri, Bruno Dunbar, Robin I. M. Sci Rep Article In contrast to long-term relationships, far less is known about the temporal evolution of transient relationships, although these constitute a substantial fraction of people’s communication networks. Previous literature suggests that ratings of relationship emotional intensity decay gradually until the relationship ends. Using mobile phone data from three countries (US, UK, and Italy), we demonstrate that the volume of communication between ego and its transient alters does not display such a systematic decay, instead showing a lack of any dominant trends. This means that the communication volume of egos to groups of similar transient alters is stable. We show that alters with longer lifetimes in ego’s network receive more calls, with the lifetime of the relationship being predictable from call volume within the first few weeks of first contact. This is observed across all three countries, which include samples of egos at different life stages. The relation between early call volume and lifetime is consistent with the suggestion that individuals initially engage with a new alter so as to evaluate their potential as a tie in terms of homophily. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-04-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10104882/ /pubmed/37059731 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32206-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Hidd, Valentín Vergara
López, Eduardo
Centellegher, Simone
Roberts, Sam G. B.
Lepri, Bruno
Dunbar, Robin I. M.
The stability of transient relationships
title The stability of transient relationships
title_full The stability of transient relationships
title_fullStr The stability of transient relationships
title_full_unstemmed The stability of transient relationships
title_short The stability of transient relationships
title_sort stability of transient relationships
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10104882/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37059731
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32206-2
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