Header

Suche
Soziologisches Institut

«Rigid boundaries, selective salience: How classroom gender composition shapes adolescent friendships» - new article by Eszter Vit and Isabel Raabe

In a new publication in Social Networks, Dr. Eszter Vit and Dr. Isabel Raabe examine how classroom gender composition influences friendship formation among adolescents and tests whether gender homophily shifts in different social contexts. 

Rigid boundaries, selective salience: How classroom gender composition shapes adolescent friendships

Eszter Vit (Linköping University), Isabel Raabe (SUZ)

First published as an article on May, 8, 2026 in Social Networks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2026.04.013

Abstract:
Gender homophily represents one of the most persistent patterns in friendship formation, yet its sensitivity to classroom gender composition remains understudied. Using longitudinal friendship networks from 708 classrooms in the CILS4EU dataset, we employ Bayesian multilevel Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models (SAOM) to examine whether and to what extent classroom gender composition moderates friendship preferences during adolescence. We test whether the shifting salience of gender boundaries across the compositional spectrum activates in-group identification and out-group avoidance, thereby shaping same- versus cross-gender preferences. We find that the relative preference for same- versus cross-gender friends remains largely rigid and unresponsive to compositional variation. However, post-estimation analyses provide modest evidence that same-gender preferences strengthen relative to cross-gender preferences in girl-minority contexts, and mainly among the girl minority. This asymmetry suggests that the experience of numerical minority status intersects with gender hierarchies. These findings demonstrate how cultural scripts constrain adolescent friendship selection, suggesting that gender boundaries are largely resistant to compositional variation, and where composition does matter, it reinforces rather than diminishes gender homophily.

Weiterführende Informationen

About

Dr. Eszter Vit is a junior research fellow at Centre for Social Sciences, Computational Social Science Research Group, Hungary (ELTE) and a postdoctoral researcher at Linköping University, The Institute for Analytical Sociology, Sweden. She researches on peer influence and friendship networks.

About

Isabel Raabe is an SNF Ambizione-Grant holder at the Department of Sociology. She is working on school classroom compositions and their effects on social dynamics and educational outcomes. In her research, she is interested in how individuals shape and interact with their social context, and whether this can explain different aspects of social inequality, especially in the educational context.  

Instagram LinkedIn Bluesky Mail

Zurück zur News-Übersicht

Unterseiten