AI finds that friendship is mostly about who you already know, not who you are

A new study used AI to predict how friendships form among students. It turns out that existing social connections matter far more than individual personality traits. This means that who you know, and how you are connected, largely determines new relationships.

For years, social science has debated whether personality or social structure drives friendship. This paper suggests that structure is the overwhelming factor. It means that efforts to build social cohesion might focus less on individual matching and more on creating environments that foster new connections within existing networks.