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Humans Choose Friends With Similar DNA
KentuckyFC writes "The study of social networks has long shown that people tend to pick friends who are similar to them — birds of a feather stick together (PDF). Now a study of the genomes of almost 2000 Americans has found that those who are friends also share remarkable genetic similarities. 'Pairs of friends are, on average, as genetically similar to one another as fourth cousins,' the study concludes. By contrast, strangers share few genetic similarities. The result seems to confirm a 30-year-old theory that a person's genes causes them to seek out circumstances that are compatible with their phenotype. If that's the case, then people with similar genes should end up in similar environments and so be more likely to become friends."
How dare you insult my friends by comparing them to me!
I've lived around the world and have a variety of friends. I'm assuming these 2000 individuals for the study were in environments that just happened to have similar genes around them.
Raaaaciiiiiists!
(yes, yes, the supported hypothesis does not cleanly overlap with the concept of racism, but you know this'll be used as "proof" that white people are racist)
Because if you're pooling data from the south, of course they are going to have similar DNA...nobody in the south has dissimilar genetic structure.
All humans have "similar" DNA
Was there a control for geographically similar area? If you live in certain areas like Appalachia, everyone you know is probably a fourth cousin. So of course your friends would be related to you.
Enough said.
Whatever the cause, the discovery that our friends are genetically similar to us has significant implications. “The subtle process of genetic sorting in human social relationships might have an important effect on a number of other biological and social processes,” say Christakis and Fowler.
For example, germs, viruses and even information may spread more (or less) easily amongst groups that share a particular genetic background.
So we evolved a tendency to monoculture, making us more vulnerable to disease? That would seem ... counterintuitive.
I find this study to be extremely flawed, not to say elitist / racist.
Yes, rednecks who listen to country music and drink cheap beer and whisky like to have friends who are also rednecks who listen to country music and drink cheap beer and whisky.
If the study had been conducted with 2000 subjects from culturally diverse places, like NY or Tokyo, I'm sure the results would've been a lot diferent.
I was going to post AC, but fuck it, I got karma to burn...
Real men fuck gila monsters.
In a number of different memoirs from actors in the original Planet of the Apes, it was noted that people playing different types of apes always sat with each other at lunch. It was a bizarre granfalloon - baboons with baboons and orangs with orangs for no other reason than that they looked the same. And these were people that knew each other before the film.
People have a natural inclination to like people that look more like them whether it makes sense in modern society or not.
This makes me sad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ4B7G8Rw3Q
yeah, people like to live in a comfort zone — but i've found that some of the best friends come from right out of that comfort zone..
2cents
jp
A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares to cut the rope and be free.
(Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek)
After all, many friends fuck their friends' wives, so after a couple of generations, they are all a happy family.
If there are only six degrees of separation between you and just about everybody on earth, the classification "fourth cousin" probably covers a large part of the earth's population!
FTFA:
But the FA goes on about the many many many questions raised.
This is one of those studies where our grandkids will have a better idea of what's going on.
I once heard on a TED talk that one should ignore all research on the brain in one's lifetime because it'll be most likely wrong.
I think genetics should fall into that category.
... such as birthplace and race?
Race alone would account for a huge genetic difference, and people tend to be friends with people of their own race for all sorts of reasons that can be easily explained through psychology and sociology. You're also more likely to be at least distantly related to people who live in the same area as you do.
Slashdot just ran a story on universal genome sequencing at birth. How long before your prom date is set up before you're home from the maternity ward.
you know this'll be used as "proof" that white people are racist)
Tell me something. Do you know what the term "Straw man" means?
Something tells me I won't get an answer. Or if I do, it will be some sort of lame joke that isn't really an answer.
I'm reminded of the Better Off Ted episode Get Happy
Linda suggests that Veridian let its employees have decorations in their company. Veronica agrees, but the company selects the decorations and assigns them to the employees. Linda discovers that she's suddenly a cat person, while other employees have cars, Green Bay Packers, or space decorations.
"Veridian Dynamics. Teamwork. It keeps our employees gruntled."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I keep getting familyzoned!
Do my asian friends not exist? Or am i not human? Or are asians and white people far more closely related on a genetic level than i've previously been led to believe?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I have only a few close friends. They're mixed races and ethnicity, so I'm obviously not going by phenotype. I think a lot of it is the demographics of the group more so than DNA.
...has. Try reading the second paragraph of the paper.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I'm sure that a few will claim "no, you are just anti-science" or some such but lets check a simple fact. 2000 genes were used in this study. What percentage of the human genome is this? Not only would this mean that "correlation == causation", but that correlation of 8.024e-6 (yes, that is a very small number) is the "normal".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Something that counters the unproven merits of diversity?! No! Actually, this study would probably be valuable in determining why levels of trust are higher in homogenous societies - Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam published a book that detailed this. That is, if this study isn't de-funded for politically incorrect results.
By the definition of racism shoved at us, this means we're all racist. I embrace it.
NT
Can I marry her or not? PS: Does the article talk about friends of opposite sex?
I've lived around the world and have a variety of friends.
Well neat. You alone must be a representative sample set of humanity that dwarfs this mere 1932 person sample group for statistical relevance. Thank goodness you know more about statistics than people doing a population study!
I'm assuming these 2000 individuals for the study were in environments that just happened to have similar genes around them.
Actually, if you read the study (OMG! I must be new here!), then you'll see that they address this point:
"There are (at least) four possible reasons that friends may exhibit homophily in their genotypes. First, correlation in genotypes may be a trivial by-product of the tendency of people to make friends with geographically proximate or ethnoracially similar individuals who also tend to share the same ancestry. Thus, it is important to use strict controls for population stratification in tests of genetic correlation (below, we rely on the widely used principal components method to control for ancestry). [...] Third, people may actively choose particular environments, and, in those environments, they may be more likely to encounter people with similar phenotypes influenced by specific genotypes. If people then choose friends from within these environments (even at random), it would tend to generate correlated genotypes."
[...]
"To eliminate the possibility that the results are influenced by people tending to make friends with distant relatives, we use only the 907 friend pairs where kinship â 0 (recall that kinship can be less than zero when unrelated individuals tend to have negatively correlated genotypes)." (ed: They do the same with 907 stranger pairs.)
In the end, they find that people prefer friends that share genes for the same sense of smell and the same linoleic acid metabolism. We also strongly prefer people with different genotypes for immune system function. While there are hundreds more homophilic and heterophilic gene correlations, those were the three that were most over-represented between people. There are many other genes that friends share, but most of those vary from pair to pair of people and are either idiosyncratic preferences or possibly just coincidences. Those three genes are not.
It's pretty well known that human select their lovers in part by smell. It's interesting that we pick our friends too that way. The paper gives a few good theories for why that's true (based on older research) and also does so for the immune system. The linoleic acid thing seems to have baffled them a bit, though they make a stab at explaining it as possibly being related to food safety and keeping the community on the same page about what's good to eat.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm stuck with this bastard, for now. Just wait til I die, though!
Seriously. My friends would not be very closely identified with each other - or me. Nor would my wife or children!
I believe that "genetic purity" is a code word for incest.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This would explain why I'm only friends with caucasians and hate niggers and Indians...
Interesting...
The study was made in the U.S. which is a highly segregated society, I bet that introduces some bias.
Amusingly I found that in Tokyo bars (in friendship terms) I had more in common with the locals than with caucasian Americans with whom I share the same European ancestry.
Nevertheless I am broadly drawn towards females who are similar to me. Those who look most dissimilar do not rate on my "wish to procreate with" list.
For the article's hypothesis to work, it's the second point that matters most. It means that the people who are born around you will be more like you and so are there for available friendship.
Not everyone is like me, and I'm glad of that. The more diverse the gene pool, the stronger the specie.
This study fails on two counts: Americans are statistical outliers; the conclusion is fallacious due to poor understanding of causality.
For those for whom this is TL;DR -- Americans are the worst possible population to base any form of human study on (let alone a flawed study) - ref Solomon Asch's conclusion. The short summary @ neuroecology ; the longer discussion @ pacific standard.
But try this little thought experiment: take some random Anyville, USA. How much have they travelled, how diverse is their population? How do populations move? How many are going to marry from the same town, as did their parents and grandparents, and how many are going to have children and grandchildren doing the same? And even if the population started out with diversity, you can lather, rinse, repeat the marriage/procreation suds and end up with a genetically similar pool of people - the town itself holds massively similar people on average.
Those of us who are more footloose and have moved around further are still statistical anomalies, insomuch as we often hail from outside of these wells of similarity. That is not to say that since we're so different, we cannot make friends with those whose families are long time residents, nor does it exclude the idea of having a multicultural community of extremely different people, DNA-wise.
But at its core, the fault of this study is basic: a textbook example of correlation-causation fallacy.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
One of my parents is adopted and the other known to the adopted parent but not revealed to me.
As such, my "family history" is an unknown.
I've always liked italian food.
I've always had a fondness for redheads and was lucky enough to marry one.
After my first child was born, and a redhead, thus revealing that I was a carrier of the MC1R gene, it was revealed to me by my adopted parent that my other parent was in fact a redheaded full blooded italian.
I've always said that it must be my genetics that made me this way.
All humans have "similar" DNA
Wow, what an amazingly useless statement. Hey, scientists! SlithyMagister has declared that there is no point in describing genomics at a more fine-grained level than the species level. Field's closed -- everyone out!
Of course, the issue is the matter of degree of similarity. They found that friends were more similar than strangers, to the point that they were as similar as fourth cousins. That would be fascinating on its own, but they also found that friends were specifically more similar in two ways -- sense of smell and linoleic acid metabolism -- and specifically different in immune system function.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
What country isn't "segregated"? From Sweden to Singapore, ethnic groups have created their own communities. Gated neighborhoods aren't an American-only thing, either. You'll have to explain your reasoning further.
So what they're saying is that my DNA is particularly unique?
at the same loci.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Absolute bullshit.
Highly segregated as compared to where? Give some examples of less-segregated places. Hell, Europe is the home of the Quarter - Jewish quarter, Muslim Quarter, Turkish Quarter, Dutch Quarter, etc. ~That~ is fucking segregation.
If anything, since Americans (with some exceptions) move around their country far more than (in my experience) other people move around their countries, the US is one of the better places to make a study like this. I dont live in the region my family is from...my parents didnt live in the region their parents did, etc.
You'd be hard pressed to find many Americans who dont have a few different ethnicities in their backgrounds - I'm Irish, Dutch, Portuguese, American Indian and German. Pretty average, for an American.
Though I don't know my friends' DNA, I've moved thousands of miles away five times now, and the people I've bonded with along the way tend to be very different from myself.
However, I've noticed the women I go for often have a similar heritage to my own.
Does that mean I have canine DNA?
Now you will have to excuse me - I have some territory to mark
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
A paper which suggests that fugly people usually date fugly people. lol
My best friend's a sponge - we share 70% of the same genes.
If this behavioural trait is true, it may explain the "friend zoning" that women do in an evolutionary way. The best of friends (and the closest in genetics) rarely get laid because it would be a from of inbreeding. If organisms have a way to detect and closely associate with genetically similar individuals, it wouldn't be a stretch that mating strategies would evolve to seek individuals from outside this close group.
And then again, there's the women who like to make their rounds with entire circles of friends. I don't think any male has yet to comprehend that mating strategy.
No wonder all the stupid hot chicks only hang out with other stupid hot chicks... OR is it that women that have an IQ cant stand being around airheaded idiots.
Nahh, it cant be that, must be genetics!
That awesome Booo-Tay? All the sisters got back!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah, dat be true...But a sista mite tryta smutha my KEEiids like dat woman in parent post tried on dat 8 year-old boy. A sista got owned by da 8 yr old boy!! haha
Does that mean, the phrase "married my best friend" implies you've married your cousin? Some people were doing it right the entire time!!
We're like family? I always knew I shouldn't feel bad borrowing (and not returning) money from friends.
2000 individuals? not even statistically significant for the basest and simplest of DNA comparative analysis...
So that's why I don't have any friends...
- I stole your sig.
Have gnu, will travel.
Am someone of South Indian descent.
One of my close friends, whom I meet up for a drink maybe 4 times a week, is Chinese.
One of my best friends, whom I have known for close to 20 years is a Eurasian of Chinese / Portuguese mix.
There are people of various races within my circle of friends (Indians, Malays, Chinese, Eurasians, Caucasians - no blacks, just cause never really see much of them around).
I am born in Singapore, have travelled around the region somewhat, and am still in Singapore. There are about 5 million people of various nationalities and races here. There are no 'special' schools which only accept a specific race.
I may have breakfast at a Malay place, lunch at a Chinese place, and dinner at an Indian place. You sure about us sticking around only those 'similar' to us?
Am pretty sure a substantial number of us here (in Singapore I mean) have friends from various races.
I would think that this would be much more interesting in a more egalitarian and pan-racial society.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
And there many "white" Americans who've got some African ancestry and don't even know it.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I can't imagine what it's like to be a typical American. It's terrifying. Can you imagine hanging out with a bunch of people who aren't different? The raw potential for ineptitude and incompetence is just overwhelming.
Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 04:55:22 -0700
"You" know about the difference between correlation and causation. While the relationship between genes and people we associate with, I can accept, it is hard for me to see how we could "detect" genes in others.
Alternatively, for this context, I can imagine another causal factor and thesis (explanation).
From cognitive psychology we know we are attracted to others who have similar cognitive styles (Walter Lowen, Dichotomies of the Mind). This attraction is based on the simple principle of being able to understand and communicate with someone who has similar cognitive processing styles, like (CINT), (DINT) and (DENT) all share the NT processes (virtual-abstract modeling) and are attracted by similar interests, like this posting.
It is also believed that the cognitive style is like the 'operating system' of the brain and as such it is genetic. Cognitive style is innate. We are not taught this, neither by parents or schooling. Parents who do not have the NT processing style can have children who ARE NT (and of course in this situation the parents don't understand the child and the child does not feel understood).
In my view, the attraction is based on the social compatibilty and shared interests of similar cognitive styles and that the similar genes comes with the genetic basis of cognitive styles. ..my 2 cents.
Barry D.
THis might be true. However, relativity is a bitch. On Mars, a spikey distel is going to be your home boy.